DENISE KUPFERSCHMIDT – DECOHERENCE | PRESS RELEASE : HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

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DENISE KUPFERSCHMIDT – DECOHERENCE

HMGP | 60 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
On view by appointment May 18 – June 30

Denise Kupferschmidt, Decoherence, 2024, Brooklyn, NY

Halsey McKay is thrilled to present Decoherence, Denise Kupferschmidt’s sixth solo show with the gallery, on view May 18 through June 30 at HMGP, 60 Greenpoint Avenue, Brooklyn. Building on her Windows paintings which began during the pandemic lockdown, she continues to use morphing light and repeated geometric forms of her urban landscape to present an evocation of the passage of time. During quarantine her landscape paintings held a layer of detachment from being indoors gazing through a window. Kupfesrchmidt now shifts the vantage point from an isolated inside perspetive, to one from the ground looking up, as she and others took to the streets in solidarity.

In 2020 I took part in protests around the city. Once the protest was happening in my own neighborhood, near the police station. It was a gray warm day. We walked over and joined the march through the familiar streets. Most protests I participated in were in Manhattan or Downtown Brooklyn, places where power is concentrated, where the people who are suppose to hear the message are centralized. It was different being in my neighborhood, where people who hear the message are usually the ones without power in the world, people who are trying to just get their tasks done so they can rest. But everything was so empty at that time, people stayed inside, stayed locked down. The streets seemed like a newly available space to occupy, with less people driving around.

But when we were marching through the neighborhood, not on the main streets but on the side streets, it was at first empty but people started to open their windows, and come out on their stoops. Our yelling was drawing their attention, and they came out to see what was going on. And they were happy to see us marching, they were yelling with us and clapping and raising their fists, and it was invigorating. All the buildings had seemed so empty and dead for so many months, the streets so quiet. Seeing the faces of the people living in the buildings peering out of open windows and coming out the front doors, hanging out on fire escapes, cheering and smiling; each person felt like a bright light that had just been revealed. It felt like there were stars everywhere and they had been hidden but now you could see and feel them.

Before they revealed themselves, it was hard to imagine if there was even anyone around. The buildings might be empty, maybe everyone had left, or maybe people were just afraid of contact and so were avoiding being seen. Maybe people inside were dead. But our march was like a detector, and our presence affected that state of unknowing.

– Denise Kupferschmidt

May, 2024

Denise Kupferschmidt (born 1979, Princeton, N.J.) received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston. Recent solo exhibitions have been with Halsey McKay Gallery and Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions, most recently at Perrotin, Paris and New York; Brooklyn Academy of Music; Foxy Productions, New York; Eleven Rivington, New York and Nicole Klagsbrun, New York. Kupferschmidt was an organizer of the itinerant group-show series Apartment Show. Her work has been featured in Contemporary Art Daily, Vogue, T Magazine, ArtNet, The L Magazine and TimeOut NY, among other publications. Kupferschmidt is represented by Halsey McKay Gallery.