Huxley-Parlour William Wegman, Drawing by Artist. London exhibition at 45 Maddox Street

Closed

10.3 – 22.4 2023

William Wegman:Drawing by Artist

45 Maddox St

William Wegman:Drawing by Artist

10.03 – 22.04.2023

Closed

Hours

Monday to Saturday

10:00 am – 5:30 pm

Gallery

45 Maddox St
London
W1S 2PE

Huxley-Parlour are delighted to present an exhibition of drawings by renowned artist, William Wegman. Relying on puns, homonyms, and visual symmetries, Wegman’s drawings operate in close dialogue with his conceptual photography and video work of the 1970s. Described by critic Joan Simon as making ‘words pursue images’, Wegman’s drawings use linguistic rules against themselves, to create irreverent, quiet, and surreal works.

William Wegman was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1943. He received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston and an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champain in 1967. Wegman has been the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts grants and his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the world. These have included the seminal exhibitions When Attitudes Become Form and Documenta V, as well as a retrospective organised by the Kunstmuseum Lucerne in 1990, which travelled to museums including the Centre Pompidou, Paris and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent exhibitions include William Wegman and California Conceptualism, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018, and Being Human, which recently concluded an international four year tour. His most recent publication ‘William Wegman: Writing by Artist’, edited by Andrew Lampert and published by Primary Information in 2022, included many of the drawings in this exhibition.

THE EXHIBITION

5

The Works

15

1

William Wegman

Place Setting with all Forks

1973

Pencil on paper

2

William Wegman

What

1975

Ink and watercolour on paper

3

William Wegman

Plywood Sandwich

1983

Watercolour on paper

4

William Wegman

Two Ice Cubes

1973-1997

Pencil on paper

5

William Wegman

Child and Huge Adult

c. 1976

Pencil on paper envelope

6

William Wegman

Plant Stems

1974

Pencil on paper

7

William Wegman

Find the Difference

1974

Pencil on paper

8

William Wegman

X-Ray of Peach in Dish

1973

Pencil on paper

9

William Wegman

The Secret

1973

Pencil on paper

10

William Wegman

Wrong

c. 1973-74

Pencil on paper

11

William Wegman

It’s Going to Rain Tomorrow

1978

Pencil, coloured pencil and ink on paper

12

William Wegman

Woman with Two Hairs

Pencil on paper

13

William Wegman

Swing Set

2009

Pencil on paper

14

William Wegman

I Hate this House

Pencil and crayon on paper

15

William Wegman

Food Drug

1975

Pencil on paper

William Wegman

B. United States1943

Portrait: William Wegman

B. United States1943

Biography

William Wegman is best known for his ongoing artistic collaborations with his Weimaraners. Wegman’s early work focused on black and white photographs and moving images that utilised the subtlest of visual puns to convey their message. Man Ray, his first Weimaraner, became a central figure in Wegman’s early photographs and video works. He became an early exponent of conceptual art, and his first works were performance based. Pieces included throwing radios off a roof and floating Styrofoam letters along the Milwaukee River. An installation work was included in Harold Szeemann’s influential exhibition Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form in Bern in 1969, alongside works by Joseph Beuys, Richard Serra and Bruce Nauman.

Wegman’s first photographs and films were made as a way of documenting these early ephemeral and performance-based works, although they quickly became the focus of his artistic output. Wegman returned to photographing dogs in 1987, using a large format 20×24 inch Polaroid camera. Wegman worked extensively with the Polaroid format from 1979 until 2007.

William Wegman was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts in 1943. He received a BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art, Boston and an MFA in painting from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne in 1967. Wegman has been the recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships and two National Endowment for the Arts grants and his work has been exhibited in museums and galleries across the world. These have included the seminal exhibitions When Attitudes Become Form and Documenta V, as well as a retrospective organised by the Kunstmuseum Lucerne in 1990, which travelled to museums including the Centre Pompidou, Paris and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Recent exhibitions include William Wegman and California Conceptualism, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2018, and Being Human, which was the central exhibition at Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles in the summer of the same year.

William Wegman lives and works in New York and Maine.

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