WILLEM DE KOONING : Endless Painting
Apr 15 - July 11, 2025
Gagosian Gallery, 555 W 24th St, New York, NY 10011
윌렘 데 쿠닝: 끝없는 회화 Endless Painting at Gagosian
가고시안 Gagosian은 새롭게 단장한 첼시 갤러리(555 West 24th Street)의 첫 전시로 현대 미술의 거장 윌렘 데 쿠닝 Willem de Kooning 의 대규모 개인전 <Endless Painting>을 개최합니다. 이번 전시는 하이라인 아트(High Line Art)의 총괄 큐레이터인 세실리아 알레마니가 기획하였으며, 1944년부터 1986년까지의 회화 작품들과 기념비적인 조각 작품들을 한자리에 모았습니다.
추상과 구상을 넘나드는 '끝없는 탐구'
전후 미술의 선구자인 데 쿠닝은 색채와 선, 공간의 표현 가능성을 끊임없이 탐구하며 추상과 구상의 경계를 허물어왔습니다. 이번 전시는 뉴욕 현대미술관(MoMA)에서 대여한 <Untitled V>(1982)를 비롯하여, 그가 80년대에 보여준 말년의 화풍이 사실은 30~40년대 입체주의와 초현실주의 시절부터 이어져 온 인체 형상(팔꿈치, 무릎, 입, 눈 등)의 연장선에 있음을 보여줍니다.
육체와 풍경이 녹아든 필치
구겐하임 뮤지엄의 소장품인 <... Whose Name Was Writ in Water>(1975)와 같은 작품에서는 미끄러지는 듯한 붓질 사이로 신체의 일부가 나타났다 사라지는 환상적인 경험을 선사합니다. 또한, 약 30년 만에 처음으로 실내에서 공개되는 거대 청동 조각 <Standing Figure>는 그의 회화 속 에너지가 입체로 살아난 듯한 압도적인 존재감을 뿜어냅니다.
"그림은 완성되는 것이 아니라, 멈추는 것이다"
전시 제목인 '끝없는 회화(Endless Painting)'는 작품을 정식으로 끝내는 대신 "그저 멈추기로" 했던 그의 철학을 담고 있습니다. 그는 이전 작업의 형상을 트레이싱지로 옮겨 새 캔버스에 결합하거나 방향을 바꿔가며 끊임없이 재창조했습니다. 이러한 '예술적 재발명'의 과정은 그를 현대 미술사에서 가장 역동적인 탐험가로 만들었습니다.
Gagosian is pleased to present Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting, opening on April 15 at 555 West 24th Street. The exhibition is organized with the support of The Willem de Kooning Foundation and curated by Cecilia Alemani, director and chief curator of High Line Art. It comprises paintings dating from 1944 through 1986 and two sculptures: Clamdigger (1972), and the monumental Standing Figure (1969–84). This will be the first presentation at the newly renovated Chelsea gallery and follows Willem de Kooning and Italy, a significant presentation of paintings, sculptures, and drawings at the Gallerie dell’Accademia in Venice last summer.
A pioneering figure of the postwar era, de Kooning probed the expressive potential of color, line, and space and continuously challenged the boundaries between figuration and abstraction. Through the considered placement of late paintings including Untitled V (1982), on loan from the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Untitled XIX (1984) among works of the preceding decades, the exhibition foregrounds visual motifs that recurred throughout de Kooning’s career. This arrangement reflects Alemani’s close investigation of the 1980s paintings through which she identified an expansive repertoire of human forms—elbows, knees, mouths, eyes—that can be traced as far back as the artist’s works of the 1930s and 1940s that drew on Cubism and Surrealism.
In Montauk II (1969), flesh-toned biomorphic shapes dance in and out of focus, while profiles and limbs appear amid the slippery brushstrokes of . . . Whose Name Was Writ in Water (1975), on loan from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. In Untitled XIV (1986), the exhibition’s latest work, undulating arms extend energetically across the canvas, mirroring the outspread limbs of Standing Figure, a monumental bronze sculpture on view indoors for the first time in nearly three decades.
De Kooning often reworked his canvases, reincorporating passages from earlier compositions by tracing shapes he wanted to preserve onto vellum, and even changing their orientation multiple times during their gestation. It was through revisiting and revising his compositions that he developed a consistent but flexible vocabulary of colors and gestures rooted in figuration. “A restless explorer of the canvas, de Kooning never stopped interrogating the possibilities of what painting could be,” Alemani notes. “As a curator, it is deeply rewarding to grapple with the constant process of artistic reinvention and self-interrogation that animates his creative trajectory, especially through closer examination of his late works.” The exhibition’s title, Endless Painting, references this enduring, ever-evolving visual language and the artist’s professed decision to “just stop” rather than formally finish paintings, perhaps seeking a more expansive definition of the medium itself.
Endless Painting is the sixth solo exhibition of de Kooning’s work presented by Gagosian, with the first organized in 1987. It is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring essays by Cecilia Alemani and John Elderfield, curator of de Kooning: A Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2011–12). On May 15, Alemani will moderate a conversation exploring the continued impact of de Kooning’s paintings and working methods on artists today.
Original Text from Gagosian
