The Armory Show. Omar Ba Frank Bowling Andrea Geyer Virginia Jaramillo Anwar Jalal Shemza. Hales Gallery, Booth March 2018, NYC

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1 The Armory Show Omar Ba Frank Bowling Andrea Geyer Virginia Jaramillo Anwar Jalal Shemza Hales Gallery, Booth March 2018, NYC

2 The Armory Show, 2018 Hales Gallery is proud to announce its participation in The Armory Show 2018, with an international presentation of work by five artists whose work, spanning the past five decades and reflecting the vision of the gallery s own programme, explores questions of politics and aesthetics through powerful expressions of material, geometry and colour. Pakistani-born Anwar Jalal Shemza created his square and circle composition series in 1963, just a few years after moving to London in 1956 and abandoning a career as an established figurative painter. These bold abstractions represent a pivotal moment for Shemza, whose unique perspective allowed him to merge his deep understanding of Western geometry and Islamic aesthetics to create his own irreducible images. In Shemza s words: One circle, one square, one problem, one life is not enough to solve it. Frank Bowling similarly began as a figurative painter before turning to abstraction, entering into a masterful exploration of painting s possibilities which he has sustained to the present day, as demonstrated in the 2016 painting Diver. The restricted palette and spare geometry reveal Bowling s profound engagement with the nature of subjective experience as well as modernism s rigours and the traditions of English landscape painting. Painted at a formative moment in her career, newly immersed in New York s Soho and the burgeoning arts scene, Blue Space (1974) epitomises Virginia Jaramillo s central aesthetic and conceptual project: to express materially our sensory perceptions of reality. The richly stained, textured surface structured by the geometry of painted lines provides a visual translation of the mental structural patterns we all superimpose on our world (artist statement). In Andrea Geyer s work, material and form express the artist s engaged investigation into the complex politics of time in specific cultural contexts. Collective Weave (2017) emerges as a direct result of Geyer s research into the legacy of SFMOMA s founding director Grace McCann Morley, the sequence of curtains echoing modern textiles exhibitions held under Morley s tenure. The patterns, meanwhile, abstract logos and drawings from 1950s 70s lesbian and feminist publications. In the photographic collages Constellations (2017), Geyer reimagines portraits depicting influential women who held salons in the US, Europe and beyond. Inspired by Joseph Alber s Structural Constellations embodying experiments with visual ambiguity, the works are a way of mapping the recognisable pattern of presence and absence of these women reintroducing ways of looking that allow their recognition today. Omar Ba s works bring a fusion of figurative and decorative modes, depict part-real, part-imaginary worlds populated with human and animal beings, organic patterns, geographic and political symbols such as maps and flags a dizzying array of earthly life. Ba s signature densely layered and patterned backgrounds, trace what the artist has called the eternal resemblance between the black people of today and their majestic ancestors. For all enquiries please sales@halesgallery.com

3 Omar Ba OMAR BA (b. Senegal, 1977) has studied both in Senegal (l Ecole Nationale des Beaux-arts, Senegal, 2002) and in Switzerland (l Ecole Supérieur des Beaux-arts, Geneva, 2005 and ECAV - MAPS Arts in Public Spheres, 2011). Today Ba lives and works in both Dakar and Geneva, drawing on past memories and present experiences of both cultures to create works both deeply personal and politically resonant; works that, in his words, tell the stories and weave a thread between African and European culture. This notion of duality, whether between North and South, history and contemporaneity, the personal and the political, is central throughout Ba s work. His paintings, in a fusion of figurative and decorative modes, depict part-real, part-imaginary worlds populated with human and animal beings, organic patterns, geographic and political symbols such as maps and flags a dizzying array of earthly life. Their material composition is similarly hybrid, mixing masterful use of oil, gouache and crayon and delicately applied china ink with rough, readymade surfaces such as corrugated cardboard. In 2011, Ba received the prestigious Swiss Art Award. Throughout his career, his works have been exhibited widely and internationally at institutions including BO- ZAR, Brussels (2017); Ferme-Asile, Switzerland (2015); Hales Gallery, London (2014, 2017); Biennale de Dakar, Senegal (2014); Aagauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland (2012) and others. Ba s works can be found in private and public collections, including Credit Suisse (Switzerland), Fonds municipal d art contemporain de la Ville de Geneve (Switzerland), Fonds municipal d art contemporain de la Ville de Paris (France), Centre national des arts plastiques (France), and the Barbier-Mueller Collection (Switzerland). Many of Ba s images over the past decade have depicted a world of violence and conflict, a potent exploration of the legacies of colonialism on the African continent. In his recent paintings, however, the artist s focus has shifted. Inspired by the supernova, its grandeur and its ancient inheritance, Ba proposes a celebration of the beauty and magnificence of the people of Africa, as descendants of the black Pharaohs of Egypt and Nubia considered by many to be the cradle of civilisation. Images of mothers and children, painted against Ba s signature densely layered and patterned backgrounds, trace what the artist has called the eternal resemblance between the black people of today and their majestic ancestors. These figures are drawn from Ba s own life as well as colonial-era postcards and images of African youth that populate the media today. He has described these new works as an homage to women from Africa who look to the future, thinking about their children watching as entire generation of young adults leave the continent in search of opportunity, only too aware of the precarity of the journey to come.

4 Left: Omar Ba Supernova 1, 2017, oil, pencils, acrylic, ink, gouache on craft paper with polyester foam, 193 x 139 cm, 76 x 54 3/4 in Right: Omar Ba, Supernova 1, 2017, oil, pencils, acrylic, ink, gouache on craft paper with polyester foam, 193 x 139 cm, 76 x 54 3/4 in

5 Frank Bowling FRANK BOWLING OBE RA (b. Guyana, 1936) moved to London in 1953, where his artistic career began shortly after his arrival at the Royal College of Art ( ). His first solo exhibition, Image in Revolt, was hosted the year Bowling graduated at Grabowski Galleries in London. However, in 1966, Bowling decided to move to New York, aided by his first Guggenheim Fellowship awarded in The artist has since established studios in both New York and London. Bowling began his career as a figurative painter, and was involved in the British Pop Movement of the 50s and 60s. However, after moving to New York, Bowling s painting began to turn to abstraction the field in which his contributions were to become most significant. of Arts (London), Tate Gallery (London), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York). Now in his 80s, Bowling preserves the original spirit of modernist improvisation which drove him to develop his quasi-automatic pouring technique. In his more recent works - such as Diver (2016) - that spirit is also kept alive via the incorporation of other techniques: airy, expressive fields of stained painting evoking his light-filled colour fields and an underlying geometric rigour and structural complexity which has encompassed his career in the interplay between rectanglar and circular forms. They also demonstrate significant new developments in the artist s practice in response to his changing experiences and physical abilities, from new imagery and experiments with collaged canvas to the incorporation of collaboration with family and friends in the studio. Bowling s paintings have been exhibited widely and internationally. Selected solo shows include Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1971); Serpentine Gallery, London (1986); a UK touring retrospective (2003); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2011); Spritmuseum, Stockholm ( ); Dallas Museum of Art (2015). In 2017 the Haus der Kunst in Munich presented Frank Bowling: Mappa Mundi, a comprehensive survey of large-scale paintings. Bowling s work can be found in numerous public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museum of Fine Arts (Boston), Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas), Royal Academy

6 Frank Bowling, Diver, 2016, acrylic paint and collaged cloth on canvas, x cm, 62 1/2 x 73 3/8 in

7 Andrea Geyer Andrea Geyer (b. 1971, Freiburg, Germany) studied photography and film design at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld and fine art at the Braunschweig University of Art, both in Germany. She is a 2000 graduate of the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. Geyer currently lives and works in New York. Geyer s work explores the complex politics of time, in the context of specific social and political situations, cultural institutions and historical events. Her works across media incorporate text, image, painting, performance and photography, aiming to create spaces of critical, collective reflection on the construction of particular histories and concepts. Geyer s ongoing project exploring the networks of women who have actively shaped America s cultural landscape originated during Geyer s research residency at MoMA in New York. It exemplifies the artist s distinct approach, which brings together rigorous research, original archival material, found materials and newly conceived texts to create songs, choreographies, drawings and paintings. Through their distinct combination of fiction and documentary strategies, Geyer s works simultaneously reflect on existing systems and propose alternative possibilities. A new series of photographic collages titled Constellations (2017) form Geyer s most recent contribution to this continuously relevant project. Here, reimagined portraits depict some of the influential women who held salons informal social gatherings that brought individuals of diverse social classes together to exchange ideas, strategies and resources in the US, Europe and beyond, significantly impacting the culture and politics of their time. To reflect on the refraction of their stories, actions, and significance away from mainstream historic accounts and collective memories, the inspiration for these drawings came from a study of Joseph Alber s Structural Constellations, executed in 1950s and embodying his experiments with visual ambiguity: Geyer s Constellations series map the recognizable pattern of presence and absence of these women reintroducing ways of looking that allow their recognition today. Collective Weave (2017) is part of a series of recent works by Geyer which create a space sculpturally invoking the marginalised histories of lesbian and feminist communities from the mid 1950s to the 1970s. Responding to deep-seated repression and harassment, in 1955 the first lesbian civil rights organisation, Daughters of Bilitis, was formed in San Francisco, soon joined by a growing network of activist organisations and new publications with a range of strategies and perspectives that came together to conceive new communities for lesbians and their allies. In recognition of these pioneering organisations, Geyer created Collective Weave (2017): a sequence of 10 fabrics imaginatively incorporating logos and drawings from early feminist and lesbian magazines and flyers. In their folded form presented on individual hangers, these fabrics offer a potential to be activated as a history that was the backdrop to many lives. Geyer s work has been shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in California; The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Artists Space and White Columns, in New York City; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; RedCat and LACE, in Los Angeles; Tate Modern and Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunstmuseum St.Gallen, Switzerland; Göteborgs Konsthall, Gothenburg, Sweden; Generali Foundation and Secession, Vienna; Smart Project Space, Amsterdam; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand; the Turin Biennale; the São Paulo Biennial; and documenta (12), Kassel, Germany. International public collections with Geyer s work include the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum, and Neue Galerie, MHK, Kassel, the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg and the Federal Collection of Germany.

8 Left: Andrea Geyer, Constellations (Mabel Dodge after VanVechten), 2018, hand cut archival print on rag paper, 78.7 x 61 cm, 31 x 24 in Right: Andrea Geyer, Constellations (Frida Kahlo), 2018, hand cut archival print on rag paper, 99.1 x 77.2 cm, 39 x 30 3/8 in

9 Left: Andrea Geyer, Constellations (Rahel Varnhagen von Ense), 2018, hand cut archival print on rag paper, 60.6 x 82.2 cm, 31 x 24 in, 23 7/8 x 32 3/8 in Right: Andrea Geyer, Collective Weave, 2017

10 Left: Andrea Geyer, Collective Weave / The Lesbian Tide / April 1973, v2 no9 (Maggie Brauner), 2017, silk-screen print on linen, x cm, 144 x 60 in Right: Andrea Geyer, Collective Weave / The Ladder / July 1957, v1 no 10 (Art Editor BOB), 2017, silk-screen print on linen, x cm, 144 x 60 in

11 Virginia Jaramillo VIRGINIA JARAMILLO (b. 1939, El Paso, Texas) lives and works in New York. She studied at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, from Across her rich and varied practice, Jaramillo has continually explored abstraction, rigorously experimenting with material and process to, in Jaramillo s words, translate the structure of our physical, spiritual and mental worlds through space and geometry in art. After relocating permanently to New York City from Los Angeles, Jaramillo s works evolved in response to her new environment. Immersed in New York s artistic community and working from her large studio on Spring Street in Soho, Jaramillo began to produce a series of large canvases that were increasingly bold in their scale, composition and formal experimentation. In these works, thin washes of oil paint are poured onto the canvas, creating richly stained surfaces. Straight lines, intersecting arcs and blocked out forms, traced with mathematical precision, organise the fields of deep colour. This balanced process combining improvisation and planning, freedom and structure, colour and form results in the creation of concrete forms that reflect and embody the processes by which we, whether as individuals or societies, seek to organise our sensory experiences of space. Los Angeles ( ), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1972), Mexican Museum, San Francisco (1980), A.I.R. Gallery, New York (1984), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2011), MoMA PS1, New York (2012) and the Brooklyn Museum, New York (2014). Selected public and corporate collections include the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Richfield, Connecticut; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Mexican Museum, San Francisco; Pasadena Art Museum, California; Kemper Museum, Missouri; Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas and the Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City. In 2017 Jaramillo s work was featured in Tate Modern s exhibition Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power (12 July 22 October 2017, London, UK) and the Brooklyn Museum s We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women (21 April 10 September 2017, New York, USA). The artist s first solo exhibition with Hales also took place January 2017 at the gallery s London location. These material experiments with concretising perception place Jaramillo s work in an ancient lineage, following in the footsteps of pre-hispanic cultures who would seek to express their religious beliefs in the architecture of their cities or the construction of complex earthwork mounds. In Jaramillo s work, however, multiple cosmologies coexist, bringing together Celtic and Greek mythologies, non-western systems of spatial organisation, science fiction, modernist industrial design and classical and sacred geometry Jaramillo s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at prestigious institutions, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,

12 Virginia Jaramillo, Blue Space, 1974, oil on canvas, x cm, 82 x 70 in

13 Virginia Jaramillo, Blue Space, 1974, oil on canvas, x cm, 82 x 70 in

14 Anwar Jalal Shemza Anwar Jalal Shemza (b. 1928, Simla, India - d. 1985, Stafford, UK) studied Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art after arriving in London in late 1950s as an already established artist and writer in Pakistan. Shemza s works fuse Western principles of modernism with traditional Islamc art forms. His early works highly influenced by modernists, such as Paul Klee, express great attention to geomtery and perspective, with a bold choice of palette. After moving to London, Shemza began to incorporate Islamic themes into his work, extracting Arabic letters from scripts. This is evident in his Roots series which was executed from the 1970s until the artist s death. Anwar Shemza was a founding member of the Lahore Art Circle, a group of young artists who aspired towards modernism and abstraction during the early and mid 1950s. Shemza s work has been shown at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts,; the Gulbenkian Museum of Oriental Art, Durham; the Commonwealth Institute, Edinburgh; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the Birmingham City Museum. In 2015, Tate Britain held a dedicated display of Shemza s works.

15 Anwar Jalal Shemza, Square Composition 13, 1963, oil on hardboard, 61 x 61 cm, 24 1/8 x 24 1/8 in