2021 Exhibitions
LAND OF THE RISING SUN
Masterworks of Japanese Art
November 18th, 2021 – January 8th, 2022
MAB is pleased to present LAND OF THE RISING SUN, featuring masterworks of Japanese art. This museum-quality exhibition brings together a broad range of fine and decorative artworks and objects on loan from private collections located in the Susquehanna Valley, PA. This is the first time these artworks have been on public view. Highlights include: rare monumental porcelains; richly patinated large-scale bronzes from the famed Tokyo School; impressive Ko-Kutani, Imari, Satsuma, and Arita ceramic wares, and the rarest of all Edo period Japanese ceramics, Ko-Kiyomisu; Edo and Meiji period paintings and folding screens; fine examples of Japanese lacquerware; important ceremonial tea wares; and works made specifically for the Japanese Emperor and Royal Court.
Works on view in LAND OF THE RISING SUN showcase the various distinctive characteristics found in Japanese art: a deep respect for the natural world; an appreciation of an object’s materiality; a tendency towards both austerity and complexity; highly refined spiritual and religious metaphors; impeccable craftsmanship across a range of materials; and a deep respect for the everyday world of human endeavor, as showcased in the exquisite attention to realistic detail depicting the common person performing day-to-day rituals found in Tokyo School bronzes.
HEATHER SHEEHAN
Sharpless, Margaret
August 26th – October 9th, 2021
MAB is pleased to present SHARPLESS, MARGARET, an installation of new work by Heather Sheehan. In an uncanny premonition of events to come, Sheehan stepped back one hundred years in time, engaging directly with the spirits of the former Milton National Bank in Milton, PA. From 2019-2020, Sheehan loaned her body to the fictitious role of a spinster bookkeeper named Margaret Sharpless, a survivor of the Great War and the Spanish Flu with more than a few secrets laced into her corset. Dressed in period costume of her own making, Sheehan shut herself up in the bank with an old film camera to reveal this archetypical woman’s life.
In Sheehan’s exhibition at MAB, we are now called to witness the story of Margaret Sharpless. Sheehan engages multiple visual narratives to reveal Margaret’s life: a projected sequence of photographic images looms large on the south wall; remnants of Margaret’s work and private life are arranged around the main floor; a mysterious video showing Margaret’s flight of fancy, titled “This Bird Has Flown”, hovers on the balcony; and tucked discretely into a corner is a monitor displaying Margaret in action. Weighing the evidence of these equivocal tellings to pass judgement on the life of this woman we may find ourselves reflecting on our own life. As Sheehan writes: “Hers is a story you may already know, but I fear that you need to hear it again.”
Heather Sheehan is an American artists who lives and works in Cologne, Germany. Her works combine elements of sculpture, installation, and black and white photography with text in order to explore complex individual mythologies. More information can be found at www.heathersheehan.com
MIKE BIDLO
NOT MARSDEN HARTLEY
May 20th – August 14th, 2021
MAB is pleased to present an exhibition of new graphite on paper works by Mike Bidlo. The works on view are from Bidlo's larger series of drawings based on paintings by the American master Marsden Hartley. With these drawings, Bidlo continues his ongoing practice of challenging the idea of authorship while questioning the modernist canon. As Debra Bricker Balken writes, "Bidlo’s demystification of modernism’s core conceit of originality emanates not only from his acts of duplication but their recontextualization as his voice and property. As a result, his studio practice has involved a deep devotion to craft: that is, to the seamless reproduction that stems from keen observation and deft draftsmanship, both of which enable faithful reenactment."
Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated hard-bound book published by MAB Books with essays by Debra Bricker Balken and Brice Brown.
Mike Bidlo (b. 1953) is an American conceptual artist known for his appropriation of paintings and sculptures by 20th century masters such as Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger, Marcel Duchamp, Giorgio de Chirico, Man Ray, Constantin Brancusi, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, and Georgia O’Keeffe, among others. He is a key member of the generation of artists, including Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, John Armleder, and Barbara Kruger who emerged in the 1980s and practiced appropriating subjects and images from popular culture and art history into their own art. Bidlo lives and works in New York City. His work has been shown in the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; New Museum, New York; P.S.1/MoMA, Queens, New York; Sezon Museum, Tokyo; Saatchi Collection, London; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo; the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe; the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris; the Fondation Cartier, Paris; Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich; Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; the Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York; Galerie Daniel Templon, Paris; the Larry Gagosian Gallery, Los Angeles; Francis M. Naumann Fine Art, New York; the Hal Bromm Gallery, New York; the Paolo Curti/Annamaria Gambuzzi & Co. Gallery, Milan, among others.
Neil Anderson
TRAVELING THE PLANE
January 21st–April 24th, 2021
MAB is pleased to announce Traveling the Plane, an exhibition of new paintings by Neil Anderson. Each of the works on view reveal Anderson’s process-driven approach to a deeply intuitive and personal response to nature. Through a masterful orchestration of line, color, and space, Anderson creates an overall visual harmony in paintings that reference natural forces, environmental networks, and organic systems. These works are constantly in motion, leading the viewer’s eye in and around the picture plane. Broad, fast lines and shapes are contrasted with slow, intimate moments of unexpected color juxtapositions. Anderson’s colorful, tessellated forms derived from looking at nature–are these leaves? Vines? Branches? Clouds? Shadows?– also have a distinct musicality, with deep bass set against taut, crisp high notes.
The works in this exhibition are from Anderson’s ongoing series Earth Songs, first begun in 2013. According to Anderson, “each painting in the series is a unique song that celebrates the earth, the ground under our feet. Each of these paintings begins without a preconceived idea of the direction it will take…Ultimately, the meaning of the painting arises from the unexpected occurrences of formal arrangement that happen in the process of working toward a conclusion where all the parts become interdependent.”