Guest Curator: Joan Marter, PhD
October 26- December 30, 2019,  Moran and Woodhouse Galleries
Reception: October 27, 2-4pm
Gallery Talk: October 27, 1-2pm

This exhibition of paintings, works on paper, and sculpture will celebrate the outstanding collection of Abstract Expressionist art owned by Guild Hall. Abstract Expressionism was an avant-garde movement of the 1950s that resulted, in part, from the dynamic interplay of artists working on the East End. Among the participants in this “artist colony” of the Hamptons were permanent residents and summer visitors.  Painters included Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Willem and Elaine de Kooning, James Brooks and Charlotte Park, Robert Motherwell, and Grace Hartigan among others.  Presentation of many works that have not been exhibited in recent years, also brings attention to the digitization of the Guild Hall collection that was completed recently. The Museum has been building a significant collection of Abstract Expressionist works, and prime examples will be combined with loans by artists who created their work on the East End.

The exhibition will include a catalogue with color illustrations of examples in the Guild Hall collection, and an essay that explains the importance of East End artists to the emergence of Abstract Expressionism .

Joan Marter is an American academic, art critic and author with a Ph.D. from The University of Delaware, 1974. Marter is the “Distinguished Professor of Art History” at Rutgers University, the co-editor of the Woman’s Art Journal, the editor of The Grove Encyclopedia of American Art, the author and co-organizer of Women of Abstract Expressionism in 2016 (Denver Art Museum). 

Exhibition Catalogue

Tony Oursler
June 8–July 21, 2019
Gallery Talk with Tony Oursler: July 6, 3–4pm
Private Member Reception: July 6, 4–6pm
All Galleries
Christina Strassfield, Curator

Fresh off his dynamic Public Art Fund Commission, Tear of the Cloud, which was on view at Riverside Park this past October, Guild Hall has turned over the entire museum to Oursler who delves into the subject of water and notions of “magical thinking” on the East End.

Oursler has developed an experimental and innovative practice that utilizes projections, optical devices, audio, video, and sculpture to move images away from the white wall and onto unexpected surfaces or environments. Through this inventive technological approach, the artist explores the ubiquitous element of water as a repository for belief systems—with references that range from sea monsters and evil spirits to cartography and the claimed ability of water memory.

April 20–May 27
Private Member Reception: April 20, 5–7pm
Gallery Talk with Christine Sciulli: May 4, 2–4pm
Vocal Soundscapes with Jolie Parcher of Mandala Yoga: May 15, 6pm
Woodhouse Gallery
Christina Strassfield, Curator

Christine Sciulli’s primary medium is light. Sciulli allows the architecture of a room to dictate the composition of her work and then transforms the space to that vision. In Phosphene Dreams, a site-specific installation in Guild Hall’s Woodhouse Gallery, Sciulli will explore qualities of rigidity and fluidity by projecting light onto suspended fabric forms to create an illuminated and voluminous sculpture. Viewers are invited to be immersed in the environment and choose from a variety of perspectives and places to sit, linger, play, and interact with the work, as atmospheric shapes appear to grow and dissolve around the gallery.

All Galleries
Christina Mossaides Strassfield, Curator

Private Member Reception – August 10, 2019
Conversation with Ugo Rondinone and Bob Nickas – August 10, 2019

Guild Hall is delighted to be presenting works by the renowned Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone in the exhibition, sunny days, featuring sun-themed sculpture and paintings, as well as a collaboration with area school children. The exhibition, which explores the sun as a motif and metaphor, is divided into three parts: paintings, sculptures, and a community art project.

In a new series of eight “sun paintings,” Rondinone references the radiance and universal symbolism of the sun. He has incorporated this imagery in his work since 1991, and uses canvas spray-painted with soft concentric yellow rings as a representation of the sun and the impossibility of seeing its form with the naked eye. These eight paintings will be installed in Guild Hall’s Woodhouse Gallery.

A selection of large sun sculptures will be placed at alternating angles in Guild Hall’s Moran Gallery. These large-scale circular rings are made from vine branches which were cast in aluminum and then gilded. The artist chose to depict the vine as a symbol of renewal because of its life cycle from growth to dormancy and rebirth to a fruitful state every year—reminiscent of the solar cycle.

Following similar projects that Rondinone has carried out in Rotterdam, Shanghai, Rome, Berkeley, Cincinnati and Moscow, the artist has invited children from the East End to help him create a gallery of sun drawings. Students from local schools, daycare centers and afterschool programs will participate and create depictions of the sun to be displayed salon style in the Spiga Gallery.

Rondinone, who has a home on the North Fork, is a New York-based, Swiss-born mixed-media artist who has spent the last 25 years working in a diverse range of mediums, including painting, drawing, photography, video, installation, and sculpture. Whether trance-inducing mandala paintings, large-scale drawings from nature, moody multi-channel video environments, painted stone sculptures, or full-scale clown figures, Rondinone moves fluidly between figuration and abstraction. Rondinone often incorporates the theme of time and space in his work and explores the emotional and psychic understanding found in the most basic elements of everyday life; in this exhibition it is the Sun and its radiance.

Ugo Rondinone has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at institutions, including Bass Museum of Art, Miami; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow; Place Vendôme, Paris; MACRO and Mercati di Traiano, Rome; The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Museum Anahuacalli, Mexico City; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens; Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna; and Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, Deurle, Belgium. In 2016, Rondinone’s large-scale public work seven magic mountains opened outside Las Vegas, co-produced by the Art Production Fund and Nevada Museum of Art. In 2017, Rondinone curated a city-wide exhibition, Ugo Rondinone: I ♥ John Giorno, which honored the artist’s life partner in thirteen venues throughout Manhattan.