“Growth is more important to me than talent,” a 39-year-old Susan Rothenberg informed Grace Glueck in a 1984 New York Instances profile. On the time, the artist was “in the prime of a barely 10-year-old career,” as Glueck describes it, trying to evolve from the work of horses with labored surfaces and contoured kinds for which she had develop into identified. A few of Rothenberg’s horse work are on view as a part of The Climate at Hauser & Wirth. However extra importantly, the exhibition additionally features a vary of works that not solely verify her development from these early works but additionally showcase her means to enliven essentially the most commonplace of topics by means of iteration of type and gesture.
The Climate affirms Rothenberg’s expertise, but additionally introduces her as a dynamically multi-faceted painter regardless of the repetitiveness of her material. In an artwork world that prioritizes the clearly novel — each within the early Nineteen Seventies, when Rothenberg emerged into the New York scene, and now, 50-some years later — such delicate persistence isn’t rewarded within the second. So it’s gratifying that this exhibition presents these early horse work in pairs or doubles within the entrance gallery, thus emphasizing her dexterity with shade and light-weight.
Left: element of Susan Rothenberg, “All Night Long” (2000–01), oil on canvas; proper: element of Susan Rothenberg, “Lift Off” (2006), oil on canvas (each photographs Leah Triplett Harrington/Hyperallergic)
Rothenberg situates her figures in a haze of impastoed marks, aligning them extra carefully with formal abstraction than the figurative custom. Outlines are indicated solely by means of minute shifts in tones and light-weight. As an example, the tawny-colored earth-toned “Mary I” and “Mary II” (each 1974), put in collectively alongside the entrance gallery’s longest wall, current a profile view of a human physique on all fours, as if emulating a horse. Every picture is an accumulation of singular marks relatively than a synthesis of gestures, every brushstroke clearly stating its place inside the bigger entire of the picture. Such an strategy was radical in 1974, when abstraction, conceptualism, and minimalist, object-oriented materiality had been the traits of the day, and figuration was perceived as retrograde. On the similar time, The Climate reveals Rothenberg’s means to adapt the additive methodologies of these practices, akin to iteration, assemblage, or wrapping, and rework them right into a seductive painterly visible language.
Put in within the exhibition’s second gallery are “Foxes on a Hill” (1972), “Blue Frontal” (1978), “Our Lord” (1979), and “Red Head” (1980–81), all of which reveal the mastery of Rothenberg’s strategy. Like Feminist artists akin to Concord Hammond, Carolee Schneemann, or Mary Ann Unger, who utilized the identical strategies in three dimensions, Rothenberg doubles, encases, and gathers her topics, usually heads, horses, full human our bodies. In “Foxes on a Hill,” she twins the titular animal whereas additionally mirroring the pillowy clouds within the sky. In “Blue Frontal,” her iconic horse is enclosed inside pony legs, compelling us to see the central determine in relationship to the opposite. Certainly, relationality is vital to those works: Topics are outlined by their repeated affiliation with each other.
Susan Rothenberg, “Mary I” (1974), acrylic and tempera on canvas (© The Property of Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph by Object Research, courtesy Hauser & Wirth)
The yield of Rothenberg’s steady and regular progress — even in her final years — is most totally seen within the remaining room of the exhibition. In “Las Blancas” (1996–97), “All Night Long” (2000–01), “Lift Off” (2006), and “Untitled (Band and Hands Green)” (2018), the artist tenderly portrays our bodies in a state of vulnerability — usually seemingly nude or contorted — as if they don’t seem to be fairly comfy or settled of their area. These potent and provocative work of her final 25 years or so exude a selected anguish, but additionally an agility in her markmaking. “Untitled,” with its birdseye view of a head in two fingers, echoes the overhead, omniscient view of the yoked skull in “Red Head.” However in “Untitled,” a way of emotional transformation is extra subtly communicated through the gradual, brushstroke-by-brushstroke evolution of the inexperienced from mild verdant to darkish evergreen, or the grey peeking by means of the bonewhite head. Rothenberg was actually a talented painter — however greater than that, she was one who repeatedly sharpened that ability by means of repetition to higher articulate sentiments directly on a regular basis and beautiful.
Susan Rothenberg, “Dos Equis” (1974), acrylic and tempera on canvas (© The Property of Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph by Object Research, courtesy Hauser & Wirth)
Left: element of Susan Rothenberg, “Untitled (Band and Hands Green)” (c. 2018), oil on canvas; proper: element of Susan Rothenberg, “All Night Long” (2000–01), oil on canvas (each photographs Leah Triplett Harrington/Hyperallergic)
Susan Rothenberg, “Blue Frontal” (1978), acrylic, Flashe, and tempera on canvas (© The Property of Susan Rothenberg / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photograph by Object Research, courtesy Hauser & Wirth)
Susan Rothenberg: The Climate continues at Hauser & Wirth (542 West twenty second Road, Chelsea, Manhattan) by means of October 18. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
