The Parrish Art Museum will open no fewer than five new exhibitions on Monday, including an expansive view of subjectivity in painting from the 1970s to the present, a career-spanning survey of the work of Audrey Flack, and a show of hyperrealistic paintings and drawings.
Two other exhibits will open at the same time, one a public installation on the museum’s south facade, the other a single painting by Derrick Adams that will be installed in the venue’s Creativity Lounge within a few weeks of its completion.
Taken together, the exhibitions reflect an ecumenical, international outlook, while continuing to emphasize connections with the museum’s own collection and artists of the East End.
“A New Subjectivity 1979/2024” revisits a landmark 1979 show of the same name curated by Jean Clair, an essayist and art historian, at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. That show was an early recognition of new currents in figurative and expressionist painting that emerged in the mid-70s in response to the minimalist and conceptual trends of the previous decade.
For the current exhibition, Klaus Ottmann, the museum’s Robert Lehman Curator, has chosen works by several artists included in the original show, among them Robert Guinan, David Hockney, Philippe Roman, and R.B. Kitaj, along with such collection artists as Rackstraw Downes, Jane Freilicher, and Howard Kanovitz, whose works continue the figurative tradition. Also featured are contemporary artists not represented in the museum’s holdings, among them Marti Cormand, Jordan Casteel, Peter Doig, and Arcmanoro Niles.
Kaitlin Halloran, the museum’s associate curator and publications manager, assisted Mr. Ottmann.
“Audrey Flack: Mid-Century to Post-Pop Baroque” draws from Flack’s early background in Abstract Expressionism, her photorealist paintings, her figurative sculptures of heroic women and goddess figures, and the large-scale paintings of her “Post Pop Baroque” series. It will be the first time those recent paintings have been exhibited in an institution.
“Audrey was actively involved in the planning, layout, and selection of works for the exhibition,” the museum’s executive director, Monica Ramirez-Montagut, told The Art Newsletter. “The museum has not made any changes to the show since her passing.” Flack died on June 28 at the age of 93.
Ms. Ramirez-Montagut organized the exhibition with support from Ms. Halloran and Brianna L. Hernandez, the museum’s former assistant curator.
“Beyond Reality” is a survey of paintings and drawings by Bertrand Meniel, a French photorealist who has been creating works of remarkable detail since 1996.
Using a variety of photographs of his subject along with advanced digital technologies, Mr. Meniel is able to focus simultaneously on the foreground and the background by combining hundreds of shots on a computer screen before rendering them on canvas. Most of his paintings feature panoramic views much wider than what the human eye can perceive.
The exhibition has been organized by Corinne Erni, the museum’s chief curator of art and education, with additional support from Ms. Halloran.
All three shows will remain on view through April 6, 2025.
Also opening on Monday is “Collider,” a new public artwork by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, a Mexican-Canadian electronic artist living in Montreal. Continuing the ongoing series of exhibitions activating the museum’s south facade, “Collider” consists of hundreds of small LED spotlights that create a rippling curtain of light along the building’s south wall.
Visible from Montauk Highway and the museum’s meadow, the lights react in real time to invisible cosmic radiation from outer space, originating from stars and black holes and captured by a custom-made muon (subatomic particle) detector installed at the museum.
Organized by Ms. Erni with support from Ms. Halloran, the installation will continue through Nov. 16, 2025.
The museum’s Creativity Space, formerly known as the lobby gallery and open free of charge during regular museum hours, will be the site of the next iteration of “Fresh Paint,” a series of single-artwork exhibitions organized in collaboration with the Flag Art Foundation.
“Getting the Bag,” a new large-scale painting by Derrick Adams, a multidisciplinary artist working in Brooklyn, will open Monday and remain on view through Jan. 5, 2025. The painting riffs on cultural signifiers, says the museum, featuring a Black cowboy holding an eagle that carries a tiny designer bag in its beak. In the distance, a Native American tepee is perched on top of a canyon.
Folasade Ologundudu, an artist and writer, has been invited by the museum and the foundation to contribute a long-form text that elucidates the painting.
