Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present Maker's Mark, an exhibition of new work by Canadian-born, New York–based artist Julia Dault. This is the artist's first solo show in New York since joining the gallery in 2013, and will be on view from February 20 to March 21, 2015, at 509 W. 24th Street, New York.
For several years, Dault has created abstract paintings and sculptures that reveal the processes of their own creation. In this exhibition, she continues this exploration of artistic labor, in part through constraining, repeating, or mechanically reproducing her gestures. Similarly, compositional elements she devises for her paintings coexist with those produced industrially: some of her surfaces are created with brushes, others with non-traditional tools like rubber combs, sea sponges, or foam blocks; some paintings' patterns derive solely from printed fabrics, while others are accompanied by artist-designed frames that complement or contrast what's on the canvas. She creates each painting with a novel combination of materials, implements, and set of rules governing its making.
Dault's exploration of the handmade and the industrial continues with one of her sculptures, which are improvised on site and made of hand-bent building materials. For this piece, she combines off-the-shelf materials with Formica specially printed with a pattern from one of the exhibition's paintings. Other gestures likewise travel across media: a hand-brayered pattern on the walls of one room recurs in the largest canvas featured in the other.
One unifying element is Dault's fascination with patterns, and with the slippages and imperfections that reveal the human origins of what appears mechanical. Another is the search for variety within strict limitations. By devising expressive gestures through rules and reasoning indicative of post-minimal and Conceptual art, Dault is part of a generation of artists revitalizing abstract painting today.
Julia Dault is a Brooklyn-based artist. Her first solo museum exhibition, "Color Me Badd," was recently on view at the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto. Her next museum exhibition opens at the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver in April 2015, and the two institutions will collaborate on a monograph co-published by Black Dog Publishing.
Recent solo exhibitions include China Art Objects, Los Angeles; Galerie Bob van Orsouw, Zurich; and Jessica Bradley, Toronto. Her work is currently on view in “Elevated: Contemporary Art in the AGO Tower,” Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, and was recently included in the group exhibitions "Americana: Selections from the Collection," at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, and “Outside the Lines” at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Dault's work is in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw; and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
