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At this year’s Independent 20th Century, Alison Jacques presents Time Trembling, a solo exhibition of work by renowned American artist Lenore Tawney (1907-2007).
Tawney is best known for her woven sculptural forms, however, this presentation will also showcase other consistent series of work Tawney made throughout her 50-year career, including drawings, collages and assemblage sculptures. This overview will illustrate Tawney’s multi-faceted practice, which charted a unique path in fiber art, linking Bauhaus ideas with Amerindian impulses with Taoist concepts of space.
Located within the financial district of Manhattan, Independent 20th Century is in close proximity to Coenties Slip, an old seaport at the lower tip of Manhattan where, in the ’50s and ’60s, Tawney took a studio alongside now legendary artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Jack Youngerman, Robert Indiana and Agnes Martin. After leaving the Slip, Tawney moved into a studio space on nearby South Street – an ethereal environment surrounded by her vast collection of ephemera and found objects.
Earlier this year, Tawney was included in Weaving Abstraction in Ancient and Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Parallel to this, she also exhibited as part of Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within at the Noguchi Museum, New York and at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas. A major retrospective was staged at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin in 2019-2020, accompanied by the award-winning monograph Lenore Tawney: Mirror of the Universe.
Recently, Tawney’s work has been acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; IVAM, Valencia; LACMA, Los Angeles and Crystal Bridges, Arkansas. Other major museum collections include Tate, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American of Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio.
Alison Jacques has worked in partnership with the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation since 2018. This New York presentation would not have been possible without the continued support and scholarship of Lenore Tawney’s friend and assistant Kathleen Nugent Mangan, Executive Director of the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation.
In November 2024, Lenore Tawney’s work will be exhibited at Alison Jacques, London in dialogue with Japanese American artist Toshiko Takaezu (1922-2011), marking Takaezu’s first European gallery exhibition. The two artists had a close relationship for decades, from their first meeting in 1957 until Tawney’s death in 2007 and frequently exhibited together.