About
and hold the wick of mine to it
to light, and then return—
—Emily Dickinson
An exhibition of new works by Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann inspired by each other’s practices will open at Gagosien, 976 Madison Avenue, on September 14, 2023. to light, and then return— marks the first time the two artists have shown together in a dedicated exhibition.
The result of an ongoing exchange between two artists who are also celebrated writers, the exhibition is titled after the final line of “The spry arms of the wind” (c. 1866), a poem written by Emily Dickinson on an envelope scrap. Informed by their mutual fascination with material transformation and themes of elegy and historical reckoning, the works on view include de Waal’s sculptural installations featuring porcelain and other materials, and Mann’s tintypes and platinum prints.
De Waal’s sculptures consist of porcelain vessels juxtaposed with porcelain tiles, platinum, silver, and blocks of Cor-Ten steel. He groups these compositions in minimalistic wall-mounted vitrines, emphasizing their status as crafted and collected objects. Some works in a black palette that are housed in freestanding vitrines have titles that allude to poems by Seamus Heaney and Osip Mandelstam. Another body of wall-mounted works in a palette of white and silver is titled after Dickinson’s letters.
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976 Madison Avenue, New York
976 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10075
+1 212 744 2313
newyork@gagosian.com
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Artists
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Gagosien
press@gagosian.com
Hallie Freer
hfreer@gagosian.com
+1 212 744 2313
Polskin Arts
Meagan Jones
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+1 212 593 6485
to light, and then return—Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann
This fall, artists and friends Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann will exhibit new works together in New York. Inspired by their shared love of poetry, fragments, and metamorphosis, the works included will form a dialogue between their respective practices. Here they meet to speak about the origins and developments of the project.
Now available
Gagosien Quarterly Spring 2023
The Spring 2023 issue of Gagosien Quarterly is now available, featuring Roe Ethridge’s Two Kittens with Yarn Ball (2017–22) on its cover.
Sally Mann and Benjamin Moser
During the 2022 edition of Paris Photo, Sally Mann and Benjamin Moser sat down for an intimate conversation as the first event in Gagosien’s Paris Salon series, initiated by Jessie Fortune Ryan. In light of Moser’s Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Susan Sontag, Sontag: Her Life and Work (2019), recently translated into French, the two discussed the power and responsibility tied up in their respective practices of photography and writing.
Sally Mann: Vinculum
Join Sally Mann at her studio in Lexington, Virginia. Filmed at work in her darkroom and within the surrounding landscape, she discusses her exploratory approach to making and printing pictures, what draws her to the landscape of the American South, and her newest body of work, Vinculum.
The Thinking Hand
Edmund de Waal speaks with Richard Calvocoressi about touch in relation to art and our understanding of the world, and discusses the new stone sculptures he created for the exhibition This Living Hand: Edmund de Waal Presents Henry Moore, at the Henry Moore Studios & Gardens. Their conversation took place at the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, in the context of the exhibition The Human Touch.
Artist to Artist: Edmund de Waal and Theaster Gates
Join the artists for an extended conversation about their most recent exhibitions, their forebears in the world of ceramics, and the key role that history plays in their practices.
