Info
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BERRY CAMPBELL PRESENTS KEN GREENLEAF: RECENT WORK
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 22, 2021—Berry Campbell is pleased to present Ken Greenleaf: Recent Work. This special exhibition will feature sixteen new paintings and wall sculptures from the artist’s three new series. Ken Greenleaf is a committed modernist working in the minimalist tradition whose work is embedded in a philosophical and theoretical framework. Most recently, Greenleaf’s artistic practice has been comprised of three series: Noise Signal, 3-Body, and streamlined shaped canvas paintings. Through his work, Greenleaf continues the engagement with relations between shapes and materials that have been the central focus of his art. While comprised of geometric forms, Greenleaf’s art has a freeform aspect, forcing us to mentally organize what we’re seeing into “ideas.” He perceives the edges of his shaped surfaces, the color of his raw canvases, and the borders of his painted areas as “direct essays in understanding how we apprehend what we see and how we recognize what is real.” The tension between flatness and the feeling of and desire for illusion in Greenleaf’s art brings us to a place between raw sensation and the conceptual, which is ultimately a metaphysical one.
Greenleaf, whose art has been shown widely at galleries and museums since the early 1970s, was recently included in Here and There at Cove Street Arts, Portland, Maine, curated by David Row. The exhibition featured sixteen artists who demonstrate and continue the longstanding connection between the art worlds of New York and Maine, including Katherine Bradford, Yvonne Jacquette, Cecily Kahn, Clair Seidl, and Don Voisine.
Ken Greenleaf: Recent Work will open with a reception on Thursday, October 14, 2021 from 6 to 8 pm. The exhibition continues through November 13, 2021. This exhibition will be accompanied by a 16-page catalogue with an essay by art critic and historian, Phyllis Tuchman. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm or by appointment.
ABOUT THE GALLERY
Christine Berry and Martha Campbell opened Berry Campbell Gallery in the heart of Chelsea on the ground floor in 2013. The gallery has a fine-tuned program representing artists of post-war American painting that have been over-looked or neglected, particularly women of Abstract Expressionism. Since its inception, the gallery has developed a strong emphasis in research to bring to light artists overlooked due to race, gender or geography. This unique perspective has been increasingly recognized by curators, collectors, and the press. In March of this year, Roberta Smith reviewed Ida Kohlmeyer: Cloistered for the New York Times. This rare group of paintings from the artist’s estate had not been on view together since they were created in the late 1960s.
Berry and Campbell share a curatorial vision that continues with its contemporary program. Recently the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston acquired works by abstract painter, Jill Nathanson. Harry Cooper, senior curator and head of Modern art at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. chose a painting by Judith Godwin from the 1950s to hang in their Abstract Expressionist galleries. Works by Frank Wimberley were acquired by the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.
Berry Campbell has been included and reviewed in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, Artforum, Art & Antiques, The Brooklyn Rail, the Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, East Hampton Star, Artcritical, and the New Criterion, the New York Times, and Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art.
Not only did the program expand, but in 2015, the gallery physically expanded, doubling its size to 2,000 square feet. Furthering the ideals of the program, the gallery recently added the estates of Frederick J. Brown and Mary Dill Henry to its roster. Berry Campbell is located at 530 W 24th Street in the heart of Chelsea, New York, on the ground floor. The gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 am to 6:00 pm or by appointment.