EXhiBition
AWT FOCUS
MARY WEATHERFORD, Summer Sounds, 2024. Shellac ink on gampi torinoko paper, 56.5 x 83.8 cm. Photo by Frederik Nilsen. Courtesy Shibunkaku and Galerie Frank Elbaz.
MARY WEATHERFORD, Not Yet Titled, 2024. Shellac ink on gampi torinoko paper, 56.5 x 83.8 cm. Photo by Frederik Nilsen. Courtesy Shibunkaku and Galerie Frank Elbaz.
MARY WEATHERFORD, Not Yet Titled, 2024. Shellac ink on gampi torinoko paper, 56.5 x 83.8 cm. Photo by Frederik Nilsen. Courtesy Shibunkaku and Galerie Frank Elbaz.
Shibunkaku, Ginza
MARY WEATHERFORD: KOMOREBI
Curated by
Jeremy Strick
Shibunkaku
Veteran museum director Jeremy Strick presents the first exhibition in Japan of leading American painter Mary Weatherford, with a focus on recent works on paper accompanied by one of her signature neon paintings. Whether working on paper or canvas, Weatherford balances slow, accretive processes and quick improvisation.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Mary Weatherford’s paintings on canvas reflect a gestural, intensely physical process in which intuition and experience counterbalance speed, improvisation, and accident. The ultimate resolution of these works seems all the more miraculous for being hard won. Though made at a smaller scale, Weatherford’s paintings on paper convey an equivalent energy and drama, reflecting the precise control of free-flowing, quick-drying mediums. The extraordinary effects Weatherford achieves working on paper are evident in a series she produced in 2024, painting with shellac ink on gampi torinoko paper. A selection of these works will be included in this exhibition alongside a recently made painting with a striking length of neon tubing affixed to its surface.
Simultaneously dense and open, the paintings on paper are rich in allusion and visual effect, immediately suggestive of terrestrial and aquatic landscapes and, when allowing time for contemplation, much more. Weatherford’s paintings on canvas are similarly allusive, alternatively and simultaneously opening themselves to near-endless interpretation as landscapes and celestial skyscapes, hinting at animal and vegetal organisms, dream visions, and visions of fantasy.
Weatherford first placed a neon tube on the surface of a painting in 2012 and has continued to add this element to certain works to the present. Importantly, Weatherford determines whether to add neon tubing only after a painting is finished and she deems it complete. A strip of neon, then, will stand as a contrast and complement to the painting’s surface, tipping the artwork from image to object and illuminating—literally and figuratively—the complex layers of paint that lie beneath.
—Jeremy Strick
ABOUT THE CURATOR
