LAUNCH F18 is pleased to present Dog Days, an exhibition of painting, photography and sculpture, providing a momentary reprieve from the grip of winter. Katherine Bradford, Ryan McGinley and Jack Pierson all have eloquent roots buoyantly grounded in the carefree landscapes of summer, commenting on its meditative quality, its essence and its energy. We are thrilled to have each of them returning to participate in this exhibition.
Jack Pierson sets the tone of Dog Days with a sculptural text piece that is reminiscent of a lolling mantra one would exhale while settling into a well-deserved respite on a lazy summer afternoon. Adding a chorus of tranquility, Katherine Bradford’s paintings are rich in playful, lush hues depicting citizens-of-summer exerting various levels of carefree energy; some floating, some diving, some just possibly out strolling… then posing momentarily to be captured by the viewer.
Ryan McGinley’s photographs lean towards the more adventurous and rambunctious side of summer fun, yet can also be relaxed and contemplative. Each work radiates with aspects of the vitality of youth, companionship (human and animal) and the verdant backdrop of the sprawling stage of summer.
As the organizer of this exhibition, I have wonderful memories of each of these artists from summering in Provincetown. I’ve frolicked along the beaches with Jack, sailed with Ryan and Jack, and saw my first exhibition of Katherine’s at a wonderful gallery in the back room of Tim’s Books. It is indeed a thrill to have the three of them exhibiting in our gallery with, as Katherine puts it “works smelling of the sea” and of summer.
- Tim Donovan
Katherine Bradford is a contemporary American artist known for her luminous paintings which merge abstraction with representational motifs. Referencing outer space, Superman, Albert Pinkham Ryder’s nocturnal paintings, and the glowing colors of Mark Rothko, Bradford builds up her surfaces in thin washes that absorb and emanate light with an eerie beauty. Born in 1942 in New York, NY, she attended Bryn Mawr College and later received her MFA from SUNY Purchase. The artist currently divides her time between Brooklyn, NY and Brunswick, ME. Today, Bradford’s works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Smith College Museum in Maine, the Worcester Museum of Art, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, among others.
Ryan McGinley was born on October 17, 1977, in Ramsey, New Jersey. He received a BFA in graphic design at Parsons School of Design, New York, in 2000. That same year he staged his first solo show of photographs, The Kids Are Alright, inside an abandoned warehouse in New York’s SoHo neighborhood. He sent his self-published catalogue of the exhibition to curators, artists, and magazine editors he admired, and it garnered attention from Sylvia Wolf, a curator of photography at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Wolf championed his work, and in 2003, at 25 years of age, McGinley had an exhibition as part of the museum’s First Exposure series, making him the youngest artist ever to have a solo show at the institution.
McGinley has had solo exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), New York (2004); Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain (2005); Foam Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam (2007); Ratio 3, San Francisco (2010, 2013); and the Daelim Museum, Seoul (2013–14). Group exhibitions include those at Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2004); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2007); Brooklyn Museum (2009–10); and Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2010). McGinley lives and works in New York.
Jack Pierson was born in 1960 in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and graduated from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1984. He lives and works in New York. Pierson has had recent solo exhibitions at the CAC Malaga, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Aspen Art Museum. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other museums worldwide.
MEDIA