Van Doren Waxter is delighted to present Ishmael Randall Weeks: Annotations, Striations, and Souvenirs, a solo exhibition of new works by the Peruvian-American artist Ishmael Randall Weeks, on view September 12 – October 28, 2017 at the gallery’s 195 Chrystie Street location. Following Randall Weeks’ recent solo exhibition at the Museo de Arte de Lima, this presentation of recent sculpture and mixed media work engages themes of place, historical space, loss, transition, and transformation. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
Marking a continuation of Randall Weeks’ interest in the temporal dimensions of geographic, architectural, and civic space, the exhibition focuses on the confluence of past, present, and future, with a particular reference to archaeology and museology. In the center of the gallery will be two I-beams that each measure the artist’s body length: one is cast with sand from a pre-Columbian pyramid site, and a second is made from the brick-dust of a modern building. A metallic-grout cast of a tin roof and a series of hanging wall sculptures also alludes to the relationship of materials to the body, mental and topographical landscapes, and architecture. Brass structural elements hold wind-eroded bricks alongside layered sandblasted posters depicting ancient archaeological sites in Peru – sand dunes, pyramids, burial grounds – upon which the cities have been built and urbanized. Maintaining his ongoing use of found and transformed materials, also on view is a selection of objects sourced from these archaeological sites cast in copper. Transformed from abandoned detritus into permanent objects and presented in vitrines, these works elicit a museological gaze that disrupts the distinction between debris, artifact, and art object. Randall Weeks’ artistic practice is aligned with art historical movements such as Arte Povera, Minimalism, and Constructivism, particularly in their intersection with a conceptual mark surrounding humanity and its condensation.
Ishmael Randall Weeks will be featured in this year’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, as part of Proyectos LA curated by Luisa Teixeira de Freitas & Claudia Segura. PST is a far reaching and ambitious exploration of Latin American and Latino art in dialogue with Los Angeles, taking place from September 2017 through January 2018 at cultural institutions across Southern California. The artist will simultaneously present a solo exhibition at Federica Schiavo Gallery in Milan, from September through November 2017.
About Ishmael Randall Weeks
Ishmael Randall Weeks was born in 1976 in Cusco, Peru; educated at Bard College (2000) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2007); and currently lives and works in Lima, Cusco, and New York. He has exhibited in Latin America, in the US and internationally for 15 years. Select solo exhibitions include Cuts, Burns, Punctures at Drawing Center (New York, NY); Parquette at MACRO (Rome, Italy); and Tribune at MALI (Lima, Peru). Notable institutional group exhibitions include Contemporary Art Museum, Lima, Peru (2015); The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2014); Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2014); Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (2013); CIFO, Miami (2013); Museo de Bellas Artes, Mexico City (2013); The Drawing Room, London (2011); Greater New York at MoMA PS1 (2010); among many others. Randall Weeks’ work has been presented in numerous biennials, including the 10th Havana Biennial, the 9th Cuenca Biennial, the 6th S Files Biennial at the Museo del Barrio, and as part of Dublin Contemporary at the National Gallery of Ireland. His work is in the collections of the Albright Knox Gallery (Buffalo, NY), MIMA (Middlesbrough, UK), MALI (Lima, Peru), and the MACRO Museum (Rome, Italy), among others. Reviews and articles include The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Art in America, and Brooklyn Rail, among others.