At the The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, we’re eagerly waiting for the opening of the first major survey of the work by the groundbreaking, multidisciplinary artist Howardena Pindell. The show will focus on constant themes and visual experiments with textures, colors and structures that marked her career.
The Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen exhibition spans the New York–based artist’s five-decades-long career, featuring a rich selection of early figurative paintings, mature pure abstraction and conceptual works, and her personal and political art that initially emerged during the aftermath of a life-threatening car accident that took place in 1979.
Originally trained as a painter, Howardena Pindell spent the last fifty years challenging the staid traditions of the art world, becoming a key female art figure as a result.
A master of combining various painting techniques, Pindell is accustomed to using strange artistic materials such as glitter, talcum powder and perfumes, unconventional practices that helped her stretch the boundaries of the rigid tradition that blindly relied on rectangular, canvas painting.
Already well-regarded for her works of sumptuous and ethereal quality, Howardena Pindell’s life and career was radically altered after a 1979 accident left her with short-term amnesia. Yet, the artist was able to survive and prevail – she explored a wide range of subject matter since then, expanding her interest in some new directions, primarily of a social and political sort.
Furthermore, Howardena continued to deal with broader cultural concerns and critique sexism, racism, and discrimination at large, creating some of the most important bodies of work of the 20th century.
Aside from offering a rich presentation of the artist’s complete body of work, the upcoming Howardena Pindell: What Remains To Be Seen exhibition will also highlight Pindell’s work with photography, film and performance, secondary mediums she used to explore her place in the world.
These include chance-based photographs of drawings juxtaposed over a television screen, the 1980 work titled Free, White and 21 and a performance for film based on her personal experiences of racism.
The showcase will also include the artist’s newest artworks made during the last two years, all of which draw on the beauty of her inventive approach to abstraction.
Following a recent increase in female artist exhibitions that could have bene noted during the final quarter of the last year, it’s really nice to see that Howardena Pindell is also getting her well-deserved dos.
-Andrey V.