Amanda Valdez, Amir H. Fallah, Future Retrieval, Justine Hill, Judy Ledgerwood, Natalie Baxter, Josie Love Roebuck , Cynthia Carlson, Max Colby, Valerie Jaudon, Ree Morton, Pamela Council
  |  
Fringe

NEW YORK
07.08.2021 - 08.20.2021

PRESS RELEASE

PRESS

Fringe Publication
Essay by Alexandra Verini

Denny Dimin Gallery is pleased to announce Fringe, a group exhibition featuring twelve artists at the gallery’s New York location, on view from July 8th to August 20th, 2021.

Fringe was inspired by recent exhibitions of the Pattern and Decoration (P & D) art movement from the 1970s and its resonance and resurgence with many contemporary artists. The movement’s privileging of materials such as textiles and ceramics, its promotion of female artists and its interest in domestic space as a place for creativity, all connect it strongly to the concerns of contemporary artists half a century later. 

P & D exalted the artists, mediums, cultures, and aesthetics the then current artworld snubbed. It sought out what was on the periphery, on the fringe of mainstream and turned it on its head. The references to fabric design, quilting, stained glass, manuscripts, textiles, pottery, mosaics, embroidery and most non-Western Art, continue to proliferate in the works of contemporary artists and upend traditional art historical narratives.

In her essay introducing a seminal exhibition on P & D, Anna Katz points out that it is not wholly satisfying to declare it an anti-minimalist movement, as there were many formal connections, such as an interest in architecture and in repetition and the grid. What was significantly challenged was instead the hierarchies of importance assigned to fine art over decorative art, and the significant codification of this in institutional and academic settings. 1

Fifty years later, the challenge P & D posed to institutional art history and the market for non-white, non-male artists continue to be a struggle for contemporary artists. Only 14% of all exhibitions at 26 prominent U.S. museums over the past decade were of work by women artists.2  A data analysis of 18 major U.S. art museums found that their collections are 87% male and 85% white.3  The deployment of materials and approaches that are coded female or are by artists of diverse backgrounds continues to be a way to challenge this status quo.

One radical element of P & D was its commitment to unveiling the realm of the domestic. Private life could become public art. Pattern acted as a visualization of the repetition of daily life. Its unabashed presentation of mundane daily labors, sewing, floral arrangement, sitting and drafting from the kitchen table, have never been more relevant than from our present moment, when our domestic routines have become all encompassing, endless, and unprecedentedly challenging. Many artists have had no choice but to embrace the kitchen table as art studio.

1“P & D unsettled and troubled the coding by the academic, the discipline of art history, the museum, and the market of the wide range of arts historically associated with women’s traditional activities in the home and non-Western cultures as decorative and thus secondary, or worse.” Anna Katz, Lessons in Promiscity: Patterning and the New Decorativeness in Art of the 1970s and 1980s.

2Julia Halperin and Charlotte Burns, “Museums Claim They’re Paying More Attention to Female Artists. That’s an Illusion,” Artnet, from the series “Women’s Place in the Art World.” September 19, 2019.

3Chad Topaz, Bernhard Klingenberg, Daniel Turek, Brianna Heggeseth, Pamela Harris, Julie C. Blackwood, C. Ondine Chavoya, Steven Nelson, Kevin M. Murphy. “Diversity of Artists in Major U.S. Museums,” Public Library of Science (PLOS). Published March 20, 2019.

 
Download Press Release

Events

07.08.21 Opening Reception | 6-8 pm |

Please join us for an opening reception for the artists.

December 23, 2021 Press

“Fringe” in The New Yorker Year End Review

As the city reopened, the art world saw legacy-changing donations for the Met and the Brooklyn Museum, and a seismic shift in Tribeca’s gallery scene.


August 17, 2021 Press

Fringe featured in Artnet Editors’ Picks

Editors’ Picks: 9 Events for Your Art Calendar, From a Talk About Chinatown’s Art and Activism to a Show of Surreal Cat Art

Read on Artnet.

August 16, 2021 Press

Fringe reviewed by TheGuide.Art

If Natalie Baxter’s hexagon-tiled, bikini-baring, and yes, fringed, Housecoat III (2021), visible from the street like a window display, lures one in, Cynthia Carlson’s More Alarming Rumors (2021) will keep them hooked.


August 03, 2021 Press

Fringe featured in Creative Boom: “The artists reappropriating ‘feminine crafts’ through a queer lens”

Many of the artists in Fringe explore ideas around gender stereotypes through the re-appropriation of traditionally “feminine craft” techniques, while many use the idea of camp as a conceptual framework.


August 03, 2021 Events, Press

Fringe featured in Interior Design: “Highlights from ‘With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972-1985′”

This very connection between the past and present prompted the Denny Dimin Gallery in Manhattan to organize the ongoing group exhibition, “Fringe.”


August 03, 2021 Press

Fringe reviewed in The New Yorker

A more intimate and entirely irresistible group show—cleverly titled “Fringe”—is on view at the Denny Dimin gallery through Aug. 20.


July 16, 2021 Press

Fringe featured in DART: “Pattern & Decoration: Now from Then”

“Many artists in Denny Dimin Gallery’s program have been significantly influenced by the movement…I also wanted to explore how some artists have complicated the gender identities of craft and how artists of diverse backgrounds have brought other important histories into their work, enriching the dialogue around the ideas of P & D.”

Read on DART.

July 08, 2021 Press

Amanda Valdez in Whitewall: “Amanda Valdez Finds Gratitude in the Accumulation of Labor and Perspective”

I’m starting to find how to make my own language and keep my abstract language, feeling like it can engage with the history of weaving at the same time.

Read on WhiteWall.

Inquire

This site uses analytics, cookies and/or other 3rd party technologies that may have access to your data, which are used to provide a quality experience. If you do not agree, opt out and we will not load these items, however, necessary cookies to enable basic functions will still load. Visit our Privacy Policy to learn more.
Contact Us:
Email us at [email protected] for requests involving data we collect. View our Privacy Policy for more info.
Opt In / Out:
To change your opt in settings, please click here to opt out or in. Or, close this popup.
Skip to toolbar