WOOF OF THE SUN, ETHEREAL GAUZE – PRESS RELEASE : HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

EXHIBITION IMAGES | PRESS RELEASE

LISHA BAI, JEAN-BAPTISTE BERNADET, CHRIS DUNCAN, TED GAHL, BRYAN GRAF, ELIAS HANSEN, DENISE KUPFERSCHMIDT, PAUL LEE, ADRIANNE RUBENSTEIN

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MAY 18 – JUNE 20 | 79 NEWTOWN LANE, EAST HAMPTON, NEW YORK

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Haze by Henry David Thoreau

Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze,

Woven of Nature’s richest stuffs,

Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea,

Last conquest of the eye;

Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust,

Aerial surf upon the shores of the earth,

Ethereal estuary, frith of light,

Breakers of air, billows of heat,

Fine summer spray on inland seas;

Bird of the sun, transparent-winged

Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned,

From hearth or stubble rising without song;

Establish thy serenity o’er the fields.

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Halsey McKay Gallery is thrilled to present Woof of the Sun, Ethereal Gauze featuring Lisha Bai, Jean-Baptiste Bernadet, Chris Duncan, Ted Gahl, Bryan Graf, Elias Hansen, Denise Kupferschmidt, Paul Lee and Adrianne Rubenstein. Taking its title from the first line of Henry David Thoreau’s Haze, the works in the show build from pure atmosphere, to sublime object and imagery. Landscape flickers in and out of paintings, photographs, and sculptures creating a tension between illusionism and materiality. Elias Hansen’s altar-like shrines’ and chandeliers cast the glow of man-made light through glass while Lisha Bai’s works capture light of the natural world in hues of quartz and rock. The geological grains of Bai’s cast sand can be seen in the ethereal pointillist atmospheres of Jean-Baptiste Bernadet’s newest paintings. The visual hum of these abstractions is captured in nature through Bryan Graf’s photographs and Chris Duncan’s sun exposures of cymbals and drums. The implication of sound beats on in Paul Lee’s tambourine works that imply the touch of skin as much as a rising sun. The reverence for celestial bodies continue a circular motif of the sun and moon in Ted Gahl and Denise Kupferschmidt’s new paintings while the painterly marks of Adrianne Rubenstein’s work render a memory of it all, captured.

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Lisha Bai graduated from Yale with an MFA and received her BFA from Washington University. Recent solo exhibitions have been with Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery and Fortnight Institute in New York. She has participated in recent group shows at Carol/Fisher in London, UK; California College of the Arts Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Nurture Art, Brooklyn, NY; Des Lee Gallery, Washington University, St. Louis, MO; Regina Rex, Queens, NY; and Franklin Art Works, Minneapolis, MN, among others.

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Jean-Baptiste Bernadet was born in Paris in 1978, he lives and works between Brussels and New York. Bernadet was artist-in-residence at Triangle Studios in Brooklyn, APT Studios in Brooklyn, and Chinati Foundation, Marfa, Texas. Solo exhibitions have been with Almine Rech Gallery in London, UK and Brussels, BE; M + B, Los Angeles, CA; Valentin Paris, FR; Michael Jon & Alan, Miami, FL; American Contemporary in New York, NY; Karma, New York, NY; Marfa Book Company in Marfa, TX; Torri, Paris, FR; the Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX.

His work has been exhibited extensively across the world in group exhibitions most recently in Abstraction(s), Curated by Nicolas Trembley at Song Art Museum, Beijing, China.

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Chris Duncan was born in 1974 in Perth Amboy, NJ. Duncan holds an MFA from Stanford University and a BFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts. Chris Duncan has held solo exhibitions with Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto, Canada; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark; and Halsey McKay, New York, and East Hampton, NY. His work has been included in exhibitions at The Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; Museum Of Modern Art, NY, New York; De Rosa Preserve, Napa, CA; and The Marjorie Barrick Museum at the University of Las Vegas Nevada. Duncan’s work is held in the collections of the Museum Of Modern Art, New York, NY; SFMoMA, San Francisco, CA; The Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, MO; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA and the Arsenal, Montreal, Canada. Outside of his studio practice he organizes events and runs a small artist book press and record label called LAND AND SEA with his wife. He currently lives and works in Oakland, California.

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Ted Gahl was born in Connecticut in 1983. He received his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 2006 and his MFA from Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island in 2010. Solo shows have been with Galleri Jacob Bjørn, Aarhus, DK; Nino Mier gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Zach Feuer Gallery, New York, NY; DODGE Gallery, New York, NY; Retrospective, Hudson, NY; and with Halsey McKay, East Hampton, NY. Group exhibitions include Freddy, Harris, NY; Rod Barton, London, UK; Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA; V1, Copenhagen, DK, and The Journal, Brooklyn, NY. Gahl lives and works in the northwest corner of Connecticut.

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Bryan Graf was born in New Jersey in 1982. Graf received an MFA from Yale University in 2008 and a BFA from the Art Institute of Boston in 2005. His work has been exhibited at the Atlanta Contemporary Museum, Atlanta, GA; George Eastman House Museum, Rochester, New York; Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Maine; and DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts. Graf was a 2016 recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. His work has been featured and reviewed in numerous publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harpers, Blind Spot, and Details among others. He has published four books:Wildlife Analysis (Conveyor, 2013); Moving Across the Interior (ICA@MECA, 2014); Prismatic Tracks (Conveyor, 2014); and Debris of The Days (Conveyor 2017). His photographs and books are held in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art Library, The Portland Museum of Art, Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, The Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Tokyo Institute of Photography.

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Elias Hansen was born in 1979 in Tacoma, WA. Hansen graduated from New Orleans School of Glass and Print in 2001. His work has been exhibited at public and private institutions including the Palais De Tokyo, Paris, FR; American Academy in Rome, IT; Albert Baronian, Brussels, BE; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA. His recent solo exhibitions have been held at Maccarone, New York; Anat Ebgi and Team Bungalow, Los Angeles, CA; Take Ninagawa, Tokyo; Cooper Cole, Toronto, ON; Jonathan Viner, London, UK; and Halsey McKay, East Hampton, NY. Hansen’s work is held in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, and Henry Art Gallery at Washington University, Seattle, WA; Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID; Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, WA; Colección Jumex, Mexico City, Mexico. Under the name Asp and Hand, he and his wife Blair make collections of handmade glass for everyday use. Hansen currently lives and works in Bellingham, Washington.

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Denise Kupferschmidt 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, including at BAM, Foxy Productions, Eleven Rivington, Nicole Klagsbrun and Tracey Williams, NY amongst others. She was an organizer of the itinerant group-show series Apartment Show.

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Paul Lee was born in 1974 in London, UK and now lives and works in New York City. Recent solo exhibitions include Karma, New York; Stuart Shave/Modern Art, London; Michael Lett, Auckland; Jeffrey Stark, New York; Maccarone, Los Angeles; among others. His work has been included in group exhibitions at Hannah Hoffman Gallery, Los Angeles; Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Gladstone Gallery, Brussels; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Contemporary Art Museum, Houston; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Portikus, Frankfurt. Lee’s work is in the public collections of the Morgan Library & Museum, New York; La Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; and San Antonio Museum of Art, San Antonio.

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Adrianne Rubenstein was born in Montréal, Canada in 1983 and lives in New York, NY. She received a Master of Fine Art from the San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA in 2011 and a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada in 2006. One-person exhibitions of her work have been presented at venues such as Reyes Projects, Bloomfield Hills, MI; Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland, OR; White Columns, New York, NY; and David Petersen, Minneapolis, MI. Rubenstein’s paintings have been featured in thematic and two-person exhibitions including Out of Control, curated by Sally and Peter Saul, Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY; Permanent Embrace, with Walter Robinson, Stems Gallery, Brussels, Belgium; Say Yes, curated by Kimia Ferdowsi Kline, Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; Feed the Meter I & II, Ceyson & Benetiere, Luxembourg; and Bunnicula, with Jennifer Sullivan, Marvin Gardens, New York, NY. Rubenstein is an active participant in the international community of artist-run spaces and artist-driven curatorial initiatives, and she was awarded the Emerging Artist Grant from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation in 2016.

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