Christina Tenaglia: NADA x Foreland

Christina Tenaglia & Jean (Hans) Arp in Catskill, NY

August 28th - 29th, 2021

Installation Views

Artworks

Jean (Hans) Arp, Untitled, 1966, woodblock print, 12" x 12" (plate) 26” x 26” (framed). From the portfolio Le Soleil recerclé (Around the Sun).

Christina Tenaglia, Shifting Matter Shedding Blue, 2021, maple wood, glazed ceramics, screws, h89" x w48" x d38"

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2021, wood, paint, ink, nails, 5” x 9-1/2” x 2-1/2”

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2020, wood, paint, nails, 3-1/2” x 12-1/2” x 1"

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2020, wood, paint, nails, 9-1/2” x 11-1/4” x 1/2"

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2020, wood, paint, screws, 18” x 16" x 3”

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2019, wood, earthenware, paint, screws, 14-1/4” x 19-1/2" x 3”

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2019, earthenware and paint, 18-1/2” x 23-1/2" x 2”

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2019, wood, earthenware, ink, screws, 14” x 23-2/3" x 2-7/8”

Christina Tenaglia, untitled, 2018, wood, earthenware, paint, ink, nails, screws, 16-3/4” x 1-1/2" x 12”

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Press Release

Heroes Gallery is thrilled to announce its participation in the inaugural edition of NADA x Foreland. In line with the gallery’s mission to trace genealogical histories within contemporary art, Heroes will present Shifting Matter Shedding Blue, 2021, a new large-scale sculptural installation by the artist Christina Tenaglia, in conversation with a work from Jean Hans Arp’s 1966 portfolio Le Soleil recerclé (Around the Sun).

Coming out of two World Wars, Arp and other artists of the Dada movement focused on chance, idiosyncrasy and an anti-rationalist critique of society and artistic convention. They used automatic drawing and free flowing poetry to counter the horrors of war. By the 1960’s Arp’s work furthered these investigations by focusing on the possibility of new organic forms. Le Soleil recerclé (Around the Sun) is a portfolio of prints made the year of his death. This untitled plate depicts a biomorphic constellation of intimate forms that’s reminiscent of a mother and child. “I allow myself to be guided by the work which is in the process of being born” he wrote. “I have confidence in it… I do not think about it. The forms arrive pleasant, or strange, hostile, inexplicable, mute, or drowsy. They are born from themselves. It seems to me as if all I do is move my hands.”

Christina Tenaglia communicates using her shapes as language, each one a word adding to a larger meaning. She sees them as lists, and says “the words are references, not explanations. Lists are the best way for me to explain how I think about a group of objects or a collection of materials… Lists are not formulas; the text is not linear. They are montage, piles, stacks.” Like Arp, her word-shapes brush against recognizable forms but at the same time are elusively vague. On the cusp of familiarity, they communicate with formal precision and highly-articulated material choices, creating a complex prose of questions, puns and softly-spoken jokes.

NADA is hosting this collaborative exhibition with Foreland, an 85,000 square-foot arts campus in the Hudson River Valley. In partnership with Upstate Art Weekend and co-organized with Jesse Greenberg of JAG Projects, the exhibition will highlight artworks from the Hudson Valley community and feature 81 galleries, non-profits, and artist-run spaces presenting over 100 artists installed in historic industrial buildings in the center of Catskill, New York. The Gallery would like to thank the Emily Delafield Floyd Endowment Fund of Vassar College for its generous support of this project.

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