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Previous Exhibitions

Inside/Outside: Linda Wervey Vitamvas & Kevin Giese
June 27, 2010 - August 11, 2010

Opening reception: Sunday, June 27, 2-4 pm

Immigrant by Kevin Giese

Linda Wervey Vitamvas

Linda Wervey Vitamvas will be showing two large works that bring together a multitude of diminutive ceramic pieces. Surface Tension, on view in the gallery, consists of more than 350 glazed porcelain pinch pots on a narrow, 20-foot glass shelf. The pots have the feel of shells that have been collected, stacked, and arranged in an orderly fashion. "Molecules in a liquid have attractive forces that hold them together, so the surface layer behaves like a thin elastic skin," Vitamvas observes. "As I rolled the glaze around the inside of each tiny piece I became mesmerized by this phenomenon and obsessed with the phrase describing it, sufrace tension." Vitamvas will also show several porcelain objects inspired by botanical drawings and the elaborate biological renderings of Ernst Haeckel. "There is a resemblance to form and anatomy that is familiar to me from my medically-inspired work," notes Vitamvas. "There is an uncanny similarity in reproductive form that exists in both the animal and plant kingdoms."

Vitamvas's outdoor piece responds to the environment of the sculpture garden and corresponds to her work in the gallery. Instead of a glass shelf, Vitamvas uses a 20-foot I-beam to display small pinch pots made from local clay. This piece echoes the scale and industrial materials of several of the sculptures on site. The pots will not be fired and will disintegrate as they are exposed to the elements, speaking to the transience of their appearance in the sculpture garden. Vitamvas will document the disintegration, creating a permanent record of their existence.

A native of the Milwaukee area, Linda Wervey Vitamvas earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Nursing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and practiced psychiatric, obstetrical and surgical nursing for much of her life. Her persistent love of art led her to integrate her scientific knowledge and experiences with the study of art. She has studied in non-traditional settings, both locally and abroad, and has formalized her education by earning her Master's and Master of Fine Art degrees from the UWM. Vitamvas has won awards in the 2009 Wisconsin Biennial, Forward: A Survey of Wisconsin Art Now, and the 2005 and 2010 Kohler Eight Counties exhibitions. Her work was featured in a solo show at the Museum of Wisconsin Art in West Bend, Wisconsin. She is currently exhibiting in the 2010 Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Vitamvas is represented by Elaine Erickson Gallery in Milwaukee and resides in Bayside where she works as a ceramic sculptor. She may be found on the web at: lindavitamvas.com

Kevin Giese

Kevin Giese tackles our complicated relationship to the natural world directly in his outdoor work, Immigrant. "Fifteen years ago I discovered the beautiful orange heartwood of mature buckthorn trees," says Giese. "I quickly learned that they are considered invasive." First introduced in this country from Europe in the 1900s, buckthorns-with their elegant curves and small stature--were prized as ornamental trees. Giese has worked with the wood in many forms, from furniture to installation. The trees for this piece were harvested from the Lynden grounds. "As a naturalist I lament the losses inflicted on our native habitat by these trees. As an artist I am intrigued by the dynamic between their visual beauty, strong resilient characteristics and their pariah status: unwanted, disliked, overlooked...Ultimately, it is we humans who are the invaders, dominating any landscape we occupy."

Giese will show a number of earlier works in the gallery. These include Still Living, an installation composed of eighty ash strips held under tension-a work that emerged from a dream about building a bamboo fishing pole-and Original River, a hollowed-out, riverine tree trunk filled with thousands of quartz pebbles sifted from Mississippi River sands over the course of two years.

Kevin Giese is an associate lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts, where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1992 and his MFA in 2007. Over the course of many years, Giese has produced work that is shaped by Buddhist philosophy, a deep knowledge of and affection for the natural world, and an extensive understanding of traditional wood joining techniques. Giese views his artistic project as one of repair and re-presentation of natural objects; he employs processes that echo nature's slow and repetitive rhythms as he reconstructs pieces of the physical world in his sculptures and installations. Giese has had solo shows at the Northwestern Mutual Life Gallery at Cardinal Stritch University in Milwaukee and at the Wriston Art Center at Lawrence University in Appleton. He has shown most recently at the Dean Jensen Gallery; at Inova at UWM as part of an exhibition of work by his teacher, Joseph Friebert; and at Cedar Gallery in Milwaukee. His web site is: kevingiese.com

Works from the Bradley Family Foundation Collection
August 15, 2010 - October 20, 2010

The exhibition in the gallery includes paintings, small sculptures and works on paper by Milton Avery, Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Alex Katz, Marino Marini, Joan Miró, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Pablo Picasso, James Rosati, Jacques Villon and Fritz Winter.

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Additional works from the Bradley Family Foundation Collection are hung throughout the first floor of the house.

Eddee Daniel + Philip Krejcarek
October 24, 2010 - January 5, 2011

Opening reception: Sunday, October 24, 2–4 pm
Artist-Led Tour of the Sculpture Garden: Sunday, November 7, 2:30-4 pm

View Frank Juarez's interview with the artists for EFFJAY PROJEKTS.

Eddee Daniel has been observing and photographing construction fences in the landscape for several years, attracted by their obtrusive orange color and the questions they raise about function, aesthetics—particularly in natural areas—and access. When he exhibited these photographs in 2009, Daniel created a more immediate experience for the viewer by simultaneously installing construction fences inside and outside the gallery space. At Lynden, Daniel continues to explore the fences’ ambiguous functionality, this time amidst the natural landscaping and permanent artworks of the sculpture garden. His collaborator, Philip Krejcarek, is constructing sculptures that evoke ladders. Unlike the fences, these ladder-like forms are defiantly non-functional. Daniel’s and Krejcarek’s project ranges from the surreal to the whimsical as it explores the relationship between creating and constructing and plays with the very notion of collaborative sculpture.

In the gallery, Daniel presents selections from his Accidental Art series—photographs depicting fences erected by construction contractors in natural areas—and Krejcarek continues to subvert the functional with a series of small sculptures from his Architectural Structures series. In these works, Krejcarek combines the non-utilitarian quality of sculpture with the practical concepts of architecture. Krejcarek was addressing sociological issues—“cities, houses, and relationships”—when he made the work in 1999, and the particular examples on view here challenge our expectations of interior and exterior, inside and outside, in the realms of architecture and human relations.

Eddee Daniel is a fine art photographer, writer, activist, and arts educator. He has been practicing and teaching photography for over 30 years in the Milwaukee area at institutions including Carroll University, Mount Mary College, University of Wisconsin—Waukesha and Marquette University High School. Daniel received his formal training at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and over the years his work has evolved to respond to his work in social justice and environmental preservation. He has exhibited locally and nationally; his book of photographs and stories, Urban Wilderness: Exploring a Metropolitan Watershed (2008), received the Kodak American Greenways Award. In addition, Daniel’s work has been published in Family: a Celebration of Humanity, by William Morrow, Popular Photography, The Photo Review, Phototechniques, Art in Wisconsin, and New Mexico Photographer, among others. www.eddeedaniel.com

Philip Krejcarek is a professor of art and chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Carroll University where he teaches photography. He has been a professor at Carroll since 1977. He is the author of An Introduction to Digital Imaging and Digital Photography: A Hands-On Introduction, both published by Cengage Learning. He is a recipient of a Wisconsin Arts Board grant and his work is included in the collections of the Milwaukee Art Museum, the Haggerty Museum of Art, the Wustum Museum of Fine Arts, and the Denver Art Museum. His sculpture and photographs are also included in the Waukesha Public Library collection. Krejcarek’s work has been purchased through the Wisconsin Arts Board Percent for Art Direct Purchase Program for public buildings.

Pop Prints from the Bradley Family Collection
January 9, 2011 - February 22, 2011

As a collector, Peg Bradley embraced Pop Art, particularly the prints of Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and James Rosenquist. A selection of Pop works on paper will be on view in the gallery, and many new works will be on display on the first floor of the house. Some—a large painting by Peter Max, silkscreens by Biasi & Landi and small sculptures by Vasa—shed light on the Pop era; others—a charming Milton Avery drawing of croquet players, a beach scene by American Impressionist Edward Henry Potthast—demonstrate Peg Bradley’s affection for bright yet intimate works.

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Inside/Outside: Shana McCaw + Brent Budsberg
February 23, 2011 - April 10, 2011

Photos: Troy Freund Photography

Opening reception: Saturday, February 26, 4:30–6:30 pm (after the Winter Carnival)
Closing event: Wednesday, June 29, 6:30-9:00 pm
   6:30 pm: Join the artists for a picnic (bring your own picnic)
   7:30 pm: Book release, video screening, and lighting of their outdoor sculpture.
Details here.

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg continue to explore scale, illusion, and the dialogue between interior and exterior space in an exhibition that focuses on combustion. The miniature 19th century wooden farmhouse that has been a recurring character in their narrative will make a ghostly, stripped-down appearance on the grounds of the sculpture garden—itself a farm in the 19th century. “Coal-and-ice” is an outline of a foundation dug several inches into the cold, wintry soil. During the opening, the artists will fill the trench with coals and set it alight, leaving a residue of ash in the shape of a house. This remnant will bear an uneasy resemblance to a series of burned or burning, charred and smoke-stained houses—sometimes no more than piles of rubble—captured in large-scale photographs in the gallery. The artists exploit the photographic medium to create the illusion that these are images of real houses, real remains, but subtle clues—scale conflicts, odd or impossible viewpoints, the miniature foundation outside—point to their fictional origin.

McCaw and Budsberg have collaborated for a decade on a practice that encompasses sculpture, performance and site-specific installation. Their recent work incorporates models that enable them to consider notions of scale, deception and suspension of disbelief while examining the psychology of place, ancestral memory, and the passage of time. McCaw and Budsberg are also founding members of the WhiteBoxPainters, a performance art group specializing in large-scale, temporary public projects.

McCaw currently teaches at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and Cardinal Stritch University. Budsberg is a supervisor at the Steve Lacey 3-D Lab at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. He is also a musician, and has built numerous set pieces for the theatre/film industry. The two received the Mary Nohl Fellowship for Individual Artists in the Established category in 2008.

Recent exhibitions include a solo show at the James Watrous Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin; the Nohl Fellows Exhibition at the Institute of Visual Arts (Inova) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Descendant, a solo exhibition at the Wright Museum of Art in Beloit, Wisconsin; and Current Tendencies: Ten Artists from Wisconsin at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee. In May 2011, McCaw and Budsberg will be in residence in Wendover, Utah with the Los Angeles-based Center for Land Use Interpretation.

http://www.mccawbudsberg.blogspot.com/

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Kevin Schlei + Lynn Tomaszewski
April 17, 2011 - June 5, 2011

Inside/Outside: Lynn Tomaszewski & Kevin Schlei
Drams, Whits, Scintillas
April 17-June 5, 2011

Opening reception: Sunday, April 17 from 4-6 pm (after Kites over Lynden)
Birdwatching with the Artists: Sunday, June 5 at 8 am

Drams, Whits, Scintillas, a multimedia installation incorporating video, sound and drawing by Lynn Tomaszewski and Kevin Schlei, brings the garden into the gallery and spreads back out onto the grounds. Tomaszewski begins with video of visitors walking in the sculpture garden and recontextualizes it as part of a projected generative drawing in the gallery, and Schlei creates an outdoor multi-channel sound piece in dialogue with Tony Smith’s The Wandering Rocks (1967-1969). As Tomaszewski and Schlei reintroduce often overlooked elements of daily life into the gallery and sculpture garden, they reframe and reanimate these spaces, allowing us to see them anew.

The video, sound and drawings in the exhibition explore flocking or swarming behavior, and suggest the potential and perils inherent in group action. According to the artists, “Flocks are a good way to think about the individual and the group simultaneously. The title of the exhibition refers to the very small and incidental things that make up larger and seemingly more significant things.”

As in much of her recent work, Tomaszewski begins with video of mundane behavior and shifts the context to infuse the quotidian with both longing and anxiety. “The rhythms of daily life play out under the suggestion of ominous consequences,” she notes. In the gallery installation, figures walking in the garden approach and mirror viewers watching the projected image.

Tomaszewski’s interest in the way technology influences perception is reflected in two series of drawings in the gallery, one white and one black. The drawings explore the human desire for knowledge and understanding, as well as the absurdity and even futility of that pursuit. The white drawings of swarms are taken from YouTube videos of flocking starlings. The black drawings began with images of supernovae from the Hubble telescope. For Tomaszewski, the drawings delineate the perceptual distance between the actual event and the viewer: a distance first eradicated by technology and then re-created by it.

The sounds of Drams, Whits, Scintillas stretch between flux and stasis, personal and indirect. Like a flock, the sounds alternate between periods of ambience, excitation and stillness. Schlei has anchored his outdoor work to Tony Smithʼs sculpture, allowing Smithʼs minimalist quiet to penetrate the aural landscape. The highly reflective surfaces of the Smith grouping and the multiple sound channels encourage viewers to move around the work, altering their relationship to the array of sound. Both the three- dimensional and four-dimensional pieces reference the structure and patterns inherent in their conception: taking the five separate pieces of Smith’s sculpture as a starting point, Schlei has organized his sounds in five-note clusters and groups of five. Within the gallery, the sound is restless, while outside the emphasis is on stillness. A computer algorithm creates currents that push sound particles the way the wind disperses a pile of leaves, or the way a flock of birds explodes out of a tree. It is also a system of frozen moments: snapshots created in the mind to hold a place or time. “These moments are connections between temporal locations,” observes Schlei. “They make us confront our own connections with the places we visit.”

About the Artists
Lynn Tomaszewski's award-winning work has been shown in solo and group shows throughout the United States and Europe. Her paintings, drawings, installations, and video work explore how technology alters perception. Large groups of figures are presented as a unified field and in this way function as visual field theory rather than portraiture. Tomaszewski’s work is in the public collections of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota and the Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento, California. She is a professor at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design.
http://www.lynntomaszewski.com/

Kevin Schlei composes electronic and acoustic music that plays with sounds through systems of manipulations. His works include live algorithmic pieces in multichannel environments, interactive installations, and custom software instruments. Recent works include Close Up Distance, an ambisonic surround sound piece that pushes the illusion of multi-space shifting, and Languid Flow of Imaginary Vapors, where saxophones melt with wispy synthesized tones to create a fog of sound colors. He is a founding member of the Milwaukee Laptop Orchestra (MiLO) and he has exhibited his installation work and custom software throughout Milwaukee. He has also collaborated with dance and theater organizations such as the Milwaukee Ballet, Danceworks, and Milwaukee Shakespeare Company, and presented his work in the Spark, BEAF and NIME festivals.

Schlei teaches computer music at the UWM Peck School of the Arts where he is the Electro-Acoustic Music Center Technical Director. He also develops software instruments for the iPhone and iPad, including Invisible Drum Set, under the developer name Bit Shape. His latest research into multi-touch instrument technology was presented at the New Interfaces for Musical Expression conference in Sydney, Australia.
http://kevinschlei.com/

Download gallery notes for Drams, Whits, Scintillas here.
Download gallery notes for the first floor of Lynden here.

Inside/Outside: Amy Cropper + Stuart Morris
June 12, 2011 - August 10, 2011

Inverse

Opening reception: Sunday, June 12, 3–5 pm
Artist-led Tour & Picnic: Wednesday, August 10, beginning at 5:30 pm

Amy Cropper and Stuart Morris share an interest in the relationship between art and culture and in work that removes distinctions between art and life. Inverse, their collaboration at the Lynden Sculpture Garden, marks their first opportunity to explore these ideas together. Cropper and Morris create sculptures designed to engage viewers in a dialogue with the piece and its environment. They often work with natural materials and processes, and have also explored the tension between natural and manmade materials in their solo work. Inverse asks viewers to re-examine the boundaries we erect between art and nature by altering and recontextualizing the natural objects that coexist with the sculptures at Lynden. The artists call attention to the beauty and sculptural significance of the natural objects, of trees and rocks, by modifying them —using color, for example—or moving them to bring them into conversation with the sculptures. Cropper and Morris also deploy the transformative power of the gallery space to re-cast natural objects as works of art: placed in the pristine gallery, the sculptural qualities of these unaltered forms will be heightened. Ultimately, Cropper and Morris make the familiar unfamiliar, inviting us to think differently about what we see.

About the Artists
Amy Cropper is an associate professor of art at Carroll University where she teaches sculpture, drawing, and the senior capstone. Cropper received her MFA from the University of Iowa in Intermedia Arts in 1993. She did her undergraduate work at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA, graduating with a degree in art and English in 1985. Cropper shows her work regionally and nationally and has recently completed two commissions.

Stuart Morris makes public artwork about places. His ideas develop by working with the people that know these places well. He has used this approach to create public art projects in the United States and Europe. Stuart received an MFA from the University of Iowa while on a fellowship, and currently teaches art and design at the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point.

Toulouse-Lautrec in the Bradley Family Foundation Collection
August 22, 2011 - September 18, 2011

Harry and Peg Bradley collected nearly 40 works by Toulouse-Lautrec between 1950 and 1955, a period of intense interest in the artist's work in the United States. This interest coincided with the fiftieth anniversary of his death. A. Hyatt Mayor, writing in The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin in November 1951, observed that Toulouse-Lautrec’s sense of aristocratic detachment coupled with his intense empathy—his ability to be both knowing and candid—made him “the artist of our day.”

Toulouse-Lautrec’s mid-century popularity was fuelled by the publication of Pierre La Mure’s novel about the artist’s life, Moulin Rouge (1950), Peter Riethof’s film, Toulouse-Lautrec Painter of the Parisian Bohème (1951), and John Huston’s film adaptation of the La Mure novel (1952). Works by Toulouse-Lautrec were reproduced in national magazines such as Newsweek: it was the dawn of the golden age of advertising and the artist’s bold and groundbreaking posters, advertising everything from bicycle chains to chanteuses, were increasingly admired.

The Metropolitan Museum had works by Toulouse-Lautrec on display in the print galleries in 1951 to commemorate the anniversary (many of their best lithographs had come from the estate of Alfred Stieglitz), and a small exhibition, from the collection of Mr. and Mrs. John Davies Stamm of New York, landed at the Milwaukee Art Institute in late 1954. There was a major show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1955 (where Harry Bradley purchased thirteen posters) that then traveled to the Chicago Art Institute and the Museum of Modern Art the following year. MoMA added extra hours to its schedule to accommodate the crowds during the first week. In addition to the Philadelphia purchases, the Bradleys bought their Toulouse-Lautrec works from at least four New York galleries: Fine Arts Associates, French & Company, M. Knoedler & Co., and Kleeman Galleries. Knoedler had shown Toulouse-Lautrec lithographs from the collection of Ludwig Charell in 1950 to benefit the Musee d'Albi, the Toulouse-Lautrec museum.

Of the many works by Toulouse-Lautrec that the Bradleys purchased, several went to the Milwaukee Art Museum, several hung at the various Zita’s locations (where, according to a newspaper article, art could be found in Mrs. Bradley’s “private office, in dressing rooms, in halls and even in the stock room”) and others remained in the Bradley Family Foundation Collection. Some of these works were originals, and some were reproductions; among them was a suite of 22 prints from the two volumes known as Au Cirque (At the Circus) purchased in 1951. Taken from a series of 39 drawings Toulouse-Lautrec made from memory in 1899 while confined to the St. James Clinic in Neuilly for his alcoholism, these lithographic reproductions were family favorites, hanging at Lynden and at Jane Bradley Pettit’s home.

Many lithographic reproductions of the drawings were made over the years, beginning around the turn of the century, and this group of prints appears to come from at least two different editions. The majority bear the imprint of the Librairie de France. Goupil published an edition that included 22 drawings (Volume I) in 1905; Librairie de France published the remaining 17 drawings as Volume II around 1913. In 1932 Librairie de Fance published an edition of 200 of the complete set; the plates were made by their studio.

Also on view are posters of two café-concert performers, May Milton and May Belfort. As “the premier poster artist of Paris,” the artist who “created the modern poster,” Toulouse-Lautrec was in great demand to advertise famous performers. Toulouse-Lautrec’s posters of fin-de-siècle Paris’s demi-monde are heavily influenced by Japanese prints, particularly the ukiyo-e prints that depicted the “floating world” of actors and courtesans of Edo-period Japan. He was drawn to the “…strong outlines, silhouettes, cropped compositions, and oblique angles” of the Japanese woodblock prints (May Belfort is said to resemble a cross-dressed male actor in a print by Utagawa Kuniyasu) but produced distinct portraits of recognizable individuals. “The agility of his line surprises like Hokusai’s,” writes Mayor, “though his insight penetrates instead of glancing off into routine caricature like the Japanese.”

Much of the specific information about Toulouse-Lautrec’s work, above, comes from these two sources:
Michael, Cora. “Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000-. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/laut/hd_laut.htm (May 2010).

Mayor, A. Hyatt. “Toulouse-Lautrec.” Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, New ser., v. 10, no. 3 (November, 1951): 89-95.

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Inside/Outside: Dressing the Monument
September 25, 2011 - November 27, 2011

Opening reception: Sunday, September 25, 2011, 4:30-7:30 pm
The opening will include a curators’ ambulatory talk, a chance to sample the specially-brewed beer, and Hannah Weinberger’s participatory concert at 6:15 pm.
A video screening is planned for October.

Dressing the Monument is the culmination of an 18-month series of exhibitions entitled Inside/Outside. Pairs of artists were selected to exhibit work in the gallery and to undertake temporary installations on the grounds. The Lynden Sculpture Garden opened to the public in May 2010, and by choosing Inside/Outside as our inaugural theme, we hoped to initiate a dialogue between the new indoor gallery and the environment--both sculpture and nature--beyond its walls; to explore Lynden’s transition from a private, domestic space to a public space; and to define Lynden’s new position within the art community.

The central challenge of a permanent outdoor collection is its permanence, and though the changing seasons and the passage of time (trees grow, flora and fauna evolve, Corten degrades) introduce elements of change, Inside/Outside has provided a series of opportunities for artists to reframe the collection and to re-present it—and the individual works in it--to the public. This establishes the basis for ongoing engagement with Lynden and its collection.

With Dressing the Monument, an exhibition of temporary sculpture and performances across the grounds and in the gallery, we expand the dialogue to include artists from beyond the region and the United States, and we re-establish Lynden as a venue with an international scope and a continuing commitment to contemporary art.

Dressing the Monument features the first institutional collaboration of Tobias Madison & Kaspar Müller, and Hannah Weinberger’s first site-specific exhibition, in the United States. These Swiss artists will be joined by nine artists from New York and the American Midwest in an exhibition that responds to Lynden’s permanent collection of monumental sculpture.

Participating artists: Tobias Madison & Kaspar Müller (Switzerland); Hannah Weinberger (Switzerland); Nicholas Frank (Milwaukee); Michelle Grabner & Brad Killam (Chicago); Lucas Knipscher (New York); John Miller (New York) & Richard Hoeck (Vienna); David Robbins (Milwaukee); and Anicka Yi/Matt Sheridan Smith (New York). The exhibition is curated by Piper Marshall, assistant curator, Swiss Institute, NY, and John Riepenhoff, Green Gallery, Milwaukee, in association with Polly Morris, Lynden’s executive director.

The Lynden collection offers a snapshot of monumental sculpture production in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The works are meant to be permanent; they eschew pedestals, emerging from the earth; they are often made from industrial materials; and their size amplifies the heroic role of the individual artist. Dressing the Monument reframes this collection, and individual works within it, by challenging these modernist tenets, and most importantly the aspiration —audacious, arrogant or simply optimistic— toward permanence.

If optimism fueled the impulse to create large, permanent works in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the artists in this exhibition are more likely to rechannel that optimism into collaborative and collective experiences; to dwell on memory and the ephemeral by charting the traces of the just-happened; and to embrace the rich social, cultural and political meanings of their throwaway materials. They celebrate the fragmentary and the in-between, deploying strategies of impermanence in their dialogue with the permanent work. Sculptures will hang from trees, be conjured from thin air, or take the form of a sensation: the taste or smell of a pheromone-laced beer, the sound of untrained musicians.

Beer craft for the Anicka Yi/Matt Sheridan Smith project by Aran Madden of Furthermore Beer.

This exhibition is supported in part by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, American Fantasy Classics, Good Day Sir Studios and Furthermore Beer.

   

About the Artists

NICHOLAS FRANK (Milwaukee) is an artist, writer and curator. Recent solo projects: Poor Farm, Manawa, WI; Green Gallery, Milwaukee; Western Exhibitions, Chicago. Group projects: Picturing the Studio, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Halbjahresgaben at Tanzschuleprojects, Munich and 200597214100022008 at Laurel Gitlen, NY.

MICHELLE GRABNER is an artist, writer and the chair of the Painting and Drawing Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited her work at Musée d´art Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; Stadtgalerie, Keil; Kunsthalle, Bern; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Daimler Contemporary, Berlin; Midway, Minneapolis; Rocket, London; INOVA, Milwaukee; Southfirst, Brooklyn; Gallery 16, San Francisco; Minus Space, Brooklyn; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; The Milwaukee Art Museum; Anne Mosseri-Marlio, Zurich; Bricks and Kicks, Vienna; Turbinehallerne, Copenhagen; Ulrich Museum of Art, Kansas; Leo Koenig Gallery, NY; Harris Lieberman Gallery, NY. With her husband, BRAD KILLAM, Grabner founded The Suburban, an artist-run project space in Oak Park, IL, and the Poor Farm, a not-for-profit exhibition space in rural Wisconsin.

LUCAS KNIPSCHER is based in New York. Recent group shows: Swiss Institute, NY; Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia; Sculpture Center, NY; and Balice Hertling, Paris.

TOBIAS MADISON (b. 1985 in Basel, lives and works in Zurich) & KASPAR MÜLLER (b. 1983 Schaffhausen, lives and works in Zurich and Basel). Their collaborative work has been featured at the Kunstverein Munich (2010), Johan Berggen Gallery, Malmo (2010); and The Modern Institute, Glasgow. Madison’s recent solo shows include Sammlung Haubrok, Berlin and The Vanity, Los Angeles (2011); Haus Konstruktiv; Frame, Frieze Art Fair, London, Æuroasia, Kunst Raum Riehen and Hydrate + Perform / Yes I Can! The Movie: A Preview, Swiss Institute, New York (2010). Madison co-runs New Jerseyy and the Basel-based published house Used Future. Müller’s recent solo shows include Société, Berlin and Circuit, Lausanne (2011); Manor-Kunstpreis Schaffhausen, Museum zu Allerheiligen, Schaffhausen (2010); and Paloma Presents, Zürich, and New Jerseyy, Kunsthaus Baselland, and Galerie Nicolas Krupp, Basel (2009).

JOHN MILLER (b. 1954, Cleveland, Ohio; lives and works in New York and Berlin). Recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Christine Mayer, Munich, Galerie Christian Nagel, Cologne, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (2010); and Kunsthalle Zürich (2009). RICHARD HOECK (b. 1965 in Hall, Austria; lives and works in Vienna). Recent solo exhibitions (2010) include ORF Landesstudio Tirol; Museum of Art, Ningbo, China; and Gallery Johann Widauer, Innsbruck. More information on their collaborations (1998-present) at www.lownoon.com.

Artist and writer DAVID ROBBINS investigates the intersections between art, entertainment, and comedy. As an artist he is best known for Talent, eighteen "entertainer's headshots" of contemporary artists including Cindy Sherman, Jeff Koons, Jenny Holzer and others, and The Ice Cream Social, a project comprising installations, performances, a novella, and a TV pilot. His sixth book, Concrete Comedy: An Alternative History of Twentieth-Century Comedy, has just been published.

HANNAH WEINBERGER (b. 1988, in Filderstadt, lives and works in Basel and Zürich). Her work has been exhibited at Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, and Alte Fabrik, Rapperswil (2011); Kunsthalle Basel, Karma International, Zurich, The Modern Institute, Glasglow, and Kunsthaus Glarus (2010). Recent performances include Kunsthal Charlottenborg; Theatre de L‘Usine, Geneva; Jam Session, Museumsnacht, Kunsthalle Basel (2011); Regionales Konzert, The Village Cry, Kunsthalle Basel and Transdisziplinäres Konzert, ZHdK, Zurich (2010).

ANICKA YI is based in New York City. Her work has been exhibited at 179 Canal (solo), White Columns, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, The Artist's Institute, X Initiative, Karma International, among others. Upcoming projects: a solo show at 47 Canal, NY and a group show at Rudiger Schottle, Munich. MATT SHERIDAN SMITH (b. 1980, Red Bank, NJ) lives and works in New York City. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include galeria kaufmann repetto in Milan and the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Selected group exhibitions include SculptureCenter, The Drawing Center, Galerie Lelong, Andrew Kreps, and Gavin Brown's Enterprise in New York, Karma International in Zurich, and the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore. His first public art commission is on view in downtown Brooklyn as part of the Public Art Fund's Total Recall exhibition.

Small Sculptures from the Bradley Family Foundation Collection
November 29, 2011 - January 27, 2012

Small Sculptures from the Bradley Family Foundation Collection

Small sculptures from the collection by Barney Bright, Mary Callery, Émile Gilioli, Milton Hebald, Sergio Lanzavecchia and James Rosati, and a pastel by Hans Hartung.

Peg and Harry Bradley began collecting monumental sculpture in 1962 with the purchase of Gerhard Marcks’s The Bremen Town Musicians (1951). In the decade prior to that, the Bradleys had been acquiring small sculptures, as well as paintings and works on paper, and Peg Bradley continued to collect small sculpture after she began to actively seek large works for Lynden.

The eight works in this exhibition give us some insight into Peg Bradley’s interests and collecting habits. She bought from galleries with whom she had long-standing relationships—M. Knoedler, Fine Arts Associates, Galerie Louis Carré--and it is likely that she purchased particular pieces after she saw them in exhibitions on 57th Street or in the 8th arrondissement. Most of the work was new, and made by often peripatetic 20th-century European and American artists (Mary Callery and Milton Hebald left the United States for Paris and Rome, respectively; Hans Hartung made his way to Paris after completing his art studies in Germany). As this small sample shows, Peg Bradley collected both figurative and abstract works (sometimes both from the same artist) and was broad-minded about materials; in addition to these sculptures, other works in the collection are made of various metals, stone, glass and plexiglass.

About the Sculpture
James Rosati is represented in the outdoor collection by his untitled Corten steel sculpture of 1975/1976. Leda was purchased nearly 20 years earlier, in 1958, from Fine Arts Associates in New York. The piece was part of a group exhibition at the gallery in May, and was featured in the photograph that accompanied the review in The New York Times. The exhibition included several artists, both sculptors and painters, whose work Mrs. Bradley collected.

Mrs. Bradley purchased Gilioli’s The Vase of Flowers from the Galerie Louis Carré in
Paris in 1959. This was a gallery that Mrs. Bradley had patronized previously, buying three paintings by Marcel Gromaire early in 1952. In 1961 she returned to purchase a second work by Gilioli, Le Petit Glacier. Four additional Gilioli works may be found in the Bradley Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

By 1965, when Mrs. Bradley purchased The Budding Crisis in Rome, she had acquired large-scale works by Aldo Calo, Henry Moore and George Rickey. She came across Sergio Lanzavecchia, a joiner and self-taught “scrap iron wizard,” early in his career—he had just begun showing his sculpture in 1962—and she bought a second work, The Garden, on the same visit. This work is now in the Bradley Collection at the Milwaukee Art Museum.

Hebald’s Scooter was acquired in Rome in 1966. Hebald, who was born in New York City, travelled to Italy in 1955 on a Prix de Rome fellowship and didn’t return until 2004. He is known for his figurative works and for many public commissions, including the 220-foot Zodiac Screen (1961), a series of twelve monumental bas-relief representations of the Zodiac on what was then the Pan American World Airways terminal at Idlewild (now Kennedy) Airport.

Barney Bright’s Sara, originally part of the outdoor sculpture collection, was purchased from the Naples Art Gallery in Florida in 1968. It moved indoors when the house was renovated in 2009-2010.

Peg Bradley began collecting Mary Callery’s small sculptures in 1961. Callery is one of several female sculptors in the collection—Barbara Hepworth, Linda Howard, Marta Pan and Beverly Pepper all have works on the grounds. In March/April 1961, the Knoedler gallery in New York produced Symbols, an exhibition of Callery works; it included Composition, The Letter S. Christian Zervos, writing in the catalogue and making an argument for Callery as an artist equally in thrall to “reality, sign and technique,” noted that “For Callery the sign has the same power as a living model of creating tension in the depths of the unconscious, of provoking unexpected stimulations, of containing a host of formal combinations.” Half a year later, Mrs. Bradley returned to Knoedler to purchase an earlier figurative work, Two Sailors. Knoedler had another show of recent Callery sculpture, covering the years 1961-1964, in early 1965. Here one could see the letters E, H, J, P and two versions of Z. The following year Mrs. Bradley purchased Alphabet Letter J, No. 2 (1962).

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