Carnegie Museum of Art (CMOA) debuts a new body of work by American painter Ruth Root (b. Chicago, 1967) in the 81st installment of its Forum series dedicated to contemporary art. With a jolt of pattern and shape, Root’s eccentric paintings dazzle and perplex with their play of geometry, color, and found images. These new works are composed of two parts involving a shaped panel painted with acrylic and spray paint suspended from a flexible sewn form covered with the artist’s own fabric designs. Incorporating found imagery from news media, art history, online search engines, and objects from CMOA’s own collection, Root creates eye-popping patterns. Physically and visually unruly, these large-scale works push the boundaries of the medium and embrace the complexities of the visible world. In addition to the exhibition, Root designed an interactive scavenger hunt based on her visits through the museum’s collection called “Looking and Drawing with Ruth Root.” Follow the artist’s playful prompts and discover the collection through her eyes.
Inherent Structure showcases a multigenerational group of 16 exceptional artists who challenge abstract painting’s historical associations with chance, gesture, and aesthetic purity. The works presented here instead reveal the deliberate structures embedded in abstraction, illustrating how contemporary practices emerge not just from formal conventions exclusive to painting, but also from the artists’ particular material, psychological, and sociopolitical concerns.
NEW YORK, January 29, 2018—Paintings, sculptures, video, film, and works on paper by 35 contemporary artists will be exhibited in the galleries of the American Academy of Arts and Letters on historic Audubon Terrace (Broadway between 155 and 156 Streets) from Thursday, March 8 through Sunday, April 8, 2018. Exhibiting artists were chosen from over 100 nominees submitted by the members of the Academy, America’s most prestigious honorary society of architects, artists, writers, and composers. The recipients of the Academy’s 2018 Art and Purchase Awards will be selected from this exhibition.
