Andrew Kreps is pleased to present a two-part solo exhibition curated by Ebony L. Haynes at 22 Cortlandt Alley & 394 Broadway in Tribeca and at David Zwirner’s galleries, 519 and 525 West 19th Street in Chelsea. Titled Post No Bills, this expansive presentation will span four decades of the artist’s work, including paintings and works on paper, many of which have never before been seen. This exhibition offers visitors insight into Saunders’s singular and influential practice, and coincides with the recent announcement that the artist will now be co-represented by David Zwirner and Andrew Kreps.
In his works, Saunders brings together his extensive formal training with his own observations and lived experience. His assemblage-style paintings frequently begin with a monochromatic black ground elaborated with white chalk—both a pointed reversal of the traditional figure-ground relationship and a nod to Saunders’s decades spent as a teacher. He subsequently adds a range of other markings, materials, and talismans. Expressionistic swaths of paint, minimalist motifs, line drawings, and passages of vibrant color tangle with found objects, signs, and doors collected from his urban environment, creating unexpected visual rhymes and resonances that reward careful and sustained looking. At once deliberately constructed and improvisatory, didactic and deeply felt, these richly built surfaces conjure the fullness of life, and its complications, allowing for a vast and nuanced multiplicity of meanings.
The first solo exhibitions of Saunders’s works were held at the Terry Dintenfass Gallery in New York (1966; 1969; 1970; 1972). In 1971, the artist was the subject of his first West Coast exhibition and first major museum presentation, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which was also shown at Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York. Saunders exhibited widely across the United States and in Europe, with solo exhibitions at the Providence Museum of Art, Rhode Island (1972); Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia (1974; 1990); University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley (1976); Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco (1979, traveled to Baum/Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles), and Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York; 1980; 1982; 1985; 1987; 1989; 1991; 1993; 1996; 1999); Seattle Art Museum (1981); Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (1984); Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts (1987; 1989); Galerie Resche, Paris (1990; 1993); Oakland Museum (1994); Phoenix Art Museum (1994); M. H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco (1995); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (1996); and the Hunter College Gallery / Times Square, City University of New York (1998). The artist also participated in the 1972 Whitney Biennial.
Over the last two decades, Saunders has continued to be the subject of solo exhibitions globally, in addition to appearing in several notable group exhibitions. In 2011, Saunders was included in Now Dig This! Art and Black Los Angeles 1960–1980, curated by Kellie Jones at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, which traveled to MoMA PS1, New York, and Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts. In 2017, the artist was included in Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power at Tate, London, which traveled to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, and The Broad, Los Angeles; and in 2022, his work appeared in the exhibition Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces at The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
In 2021, Andrew Kreps Gallery and Casemore Gallery organized the two-part solo exhibition 40 Years: Paris/Oakland in San Francisco, which spanned four decades of the artist’s career. The following year, Andrew Kreps Gallery presented the first exhibition of Saunders’ work in New York since 1998.
Saunders has been the recipient of honors such as a National Institute of Arts and Letters Award (1963), a Ford Foundation Award (1964), a Rome Prize Fellowship (1964), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), and two National Endowment for the Arts Awards (1977, 1984).
Work by the artist is held in numerous public collections, including the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, University of California, Berkeley; California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia; Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; M. H. de Young and Legion of Honor, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Phoenix Art Museum; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Saint Louis Museum of Fine Arts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Seattle Art Museum; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. He lives and works in Oakland.
