From: Petah Coyne: Vermilion Fog at Galerie Lelong

Vermilion Fog

Presented by Galerie Lelong

October 24, 2008- December 13, 2008

Petah Coyne

Petah Coyne Untitled #1180 (Beatrice), detail Galerie Lelong

For immediate release 

Petah Coyne Vermilion Fog 

October 24 – December 13, 2008 

opening reception: Friday, October 24, 6 to 8 pm 

Galerie Lelong presents 20 striking new sculptures by Petah Coyne in Vermilion Fog, an exhibition divided into two parts—Dante’s Inferno and Unforgiven, allusions to literature and film that loosely frame the works by themes of loss, chaos, and redemption. Vermilion Fog is a monumental exhibition for the artist known for her use of diverse materials in large works whose grace and fragility belie their immense weight and arduous process. Vermilion Fog opens to the public on Friday, October 24 from 6 to 8 pm, and the artist will be present. 

The 20-year career of Petah Coyne has been one of constant and pervasive reinvention—the reinvention of her own working practices, of unconventional materials and their innate characteristics, of the delineations of figuration and abstraction. Coyne’s alchemic sensibilities have led her to adopt and interweave disparate and seemingly inflexible materials such as tree roots, sand, human hair, scrap metal, silk flowers, Velcro, religious statuary, and taxidermy. The labor-intensive works that result are both obsessively precise and wildly untamed. After all of her hoarding, hoisting, piling, wrestling, and encasing, Coyne’s creation is imbued with a restless energy that develops a life of its own. 

Coyne incorporates past practices and makes a sweeping, audacious leap forward in Vermilion Fog, a significant exhibition for the artist. The narrative, hinted at in her previous sculptures, takes a more discernable form in the exhibition. Suspended in the air, sprawled on the floor, or winding skyward, the works appear frozen in time, halted. Tendrils dangling below or reaching out from the dense forms suggest decay, growth, and rebellion. In Dante’s Inferno, Coyne creates a haunting and alluring netherworld, with large, undulating masses of wax-dipped flowers, velvet, and branches in dark, saturated colors. The 11-foot Untitled #1180 (Beatrice), the centerpiece of Dante’s Inferno, is a towering, perilous creature with whole taxidermy birds engulfed in its grasp. 

Stillness prevails in Unforgiven, where lush, rounded compositions of pale flowers and white doves represent a spiritual refuge. The artist envisions these suspended figures as souls ascending and descending, passing through the room. Exquisite, intricate gates of wax, flowers, and steel keep viewers at a distance from the works, emphasizing the sanctity of the space. Unforgiven is a moving finale for the exhibition from Coyne, whose themes of regeneration and renewal echo her own persistence and ingenuity as an artist. 

Concurrently with Vermilion Fog, Petah Coyne’s works can be seen in three museum exhibitions: 21: Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum in New York; Damaged Romanticism: A Mirror of Modern Emotion at the Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston; and Time/Frame, Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Her work will be on view in the Art Museum of Western Virginia’s new building for their permanent collection, opening this fall. Petah Coyne is represented in numerous other museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art; Nasher Museum of Art; Corcoran Gallery of Art; High Museum of Art; and Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki. 

A catalogue featuring the works in Vermilion Fog and texts by Ann Wilson Lloyd and Leslie Scalapino is available, published by Charta Books and Galerie Lelong. 

Hours: Tues - Sat, 10 am - 6 pm · Contact: Stephanie Joson, 212 315 0470 or stephanie@galerielelong.com

From: Artist Bio- Petah Coyne

Born Oklahoma City, 1953; lives and works in New York   > Education1977 Art Academy of Cincinnati 1973 Kent State University, Ohio   > Selected Exhibitions Solo Exhibitions1999 "Fairy Tales," Butler Gallery, Kilkenny Castle, Ireland; catalogue 1998 "Fairy Tales," Galerie Lelong, New York 1996 "Petah Coyne, Black and White," The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; and High Museum of Art, Atlanta; catalogue Photographs, Laurence Miller Gallery, New York 1994 Sculpture, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York 1992 "Petah Coyne," Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art; catalogue 1989 "Grand Lobby Installation," Brooklyn Museum of Art 1987 "Untitled Installation," Sculpture Center, New York "Special Projects," The Institute for Art and Urban Resources, P.S. 1, Long Island City, New York Group Exhibitions2000 "Glen Dimplex Artist’s Award," Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin "Whitney Biennial," Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; catalogue 1999 "Millennium Messages," Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibitions, organized by the Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, New York; catalogue "Domestic Pleasures," Galerie Lelong, New York "Drawing in the Present Tense," Parsons School of Design, New York; catalogue 1998 "Preview, Review," Galerie Lelong, New York "House of Wax," The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati 1997 "Selections from the Collections," The Museum of Modern Art, New York "Permanent Collection," Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego "Neuberger Museum of Art 1997 Biennial Exhibition of Public Art," Neuberger Museum, Purchase, New York; catalogue 1996 "A Selection of Gifts to the Collection from Lily Auchincloss," The Museum of Modern Art, New York "Partners in Printmaking, Works from Solo Impressions," The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. 1995 "Object Lessons: Feminine Dialogues with the Surreal," Massachusetts College of Art, Huntington Gallery, Boston 1994 "In the Lineage of Eva Hesse," The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut "Prints from Solo Impressions," The College of Wooster Art Museum, Ohio; catalogue 1993 "Thirtieth Anniversary Exhibition of Drawings," Leo Castelli Gallery, New York "Monumental Propaganda," Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow 1992 "MiaHaus," Thread Waxing Space, New York "Natural Forces/Human Observations," Charlotte Crosby Kemper Gallery, Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri 1991 "Award in the Visual Arts," Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. 1990 "Art Contemporain, Visions – 90," Centre International d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; catalogue "Detritus: Transformation and Re-Construction," Jack Tilton Gallery, New York 1989 "The Emerging Figure," Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida; catalogue 1987 "Elements," Whitney Museum of American Art, Equitable Center, New York "Sculpture," Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York "Standing Ground: Sculpture by American Women," The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; catalogue "Alternative Supports: Contemporary Sculpture on the Wall," David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; catalogue 1986 "Bodies and Dreams," White Columns, New York "Sydney Blum/Petah Coyne/Beverly Fishman," P.S. 122, New York "Nature Observed," Danforth Museum of Art, Boston "Paradise & Purgatory: West Meets East," Thomas J. Watson Library, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1985 "Toy Show," BACA/The Brooklyn Arts Council 1984 "Holiday Invitational," A.I.R. Gallery, New York  > Selected References2001 Elisabeth Kirsch, "Not-So-Still Shots and Sculptures," Kansas City Star, March 2 Amei Wallach, "The Impenetrable That Leads to the Sublime," The New York Times, January 7 2000 Ann Wilson Lloyd, "In a New Millennium Religion Shows Its Face," The New York Times, January 23 Francine Prose, "The Message Trumps the Medium at Whitney Biennial,"The Wall Street Journal, March 30 Simona Vendrame, "Nature and the Solitary Self," Tema Celeste(October–December): cover, 52–59 Lilly Wei, "2000 Biennial Exhibition," Artnews 99, no. 5: 225 William Zimmer, "Synagogue and Cathedral, in the Name of Faith," The New York Times, May 7 1999 Janet Koplos, "Blanket of Darkness," Art in America 87, no. 9: 116–19 Barbara MacAdam, "Canadian Beacon," Artnews 98, no. 4 (April): 72–74 Carol Vogel, "Flurries at the Whitney," The New York Times, December 31 1998 Judith H. Dobrzynski, "Steadily Weaving toward Her Goal," The New York Times, October 6 Ken Johnson, "Petah Coyne ‘Fairy Tales,’" The New York Times, September 18 Barbara MacAdam, "Petah Coyne," Artnews 97, no. 10: 165–66 Mary Tannen, "It’s the Hair Stupid," The New York Times, November 1 1997 Catherine Fox, "Petah Coyne and Her Girls," The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 9 Ann Landi, "Site Specifics," Artnews 96, no. 4: 116–18 1996 Don Desmett, Transforming Social Order, Philadelphia: Temple Gallery, brochure Barbara MacAdam, "Girl Talk," Artnews 95, no. 8 (September): cover, 104–7 Roberta Smith, "The World through Women’s Lenses," The New York Times, December 13 "Surface and Illusion, An Edge of Black," Aperture, no. 145 (fall): 46–51 1995 Christoph Gerozissis, The Invisible Force: Nomadism as Art Practice, Lakeland, Fla.: Polk Museum of Art, catalogue/brochure Lucy R. Lippard, The Pink Glass Swan, New York: New Press, 8, 18 1994 Dore Ashton, ed., Monumental Propaganda, New York: Independent Curators Incorporated "Gallery Reviews/Petah Coyne," The New Yorker 70, no. 33 (October 17): 29 Nancy Princenthal, "Petah Coyne at Jack Shainman," Art in America 82, no. 6: 95 1993 Lawrence Weschler, "Portfolio, Slight Modifications," The New Yorker 69, no. 12 (July 12): 59–65 1992 Suzaan Boettger, "Dirt Works," Sculpture 2, no. 6 (November/December): 38–43 1991 Roberta Smith, "On Long Island, Photos, Portraits, Pollack and Stereotyping," The New York Times, August 9 Robert Talpin, "Petah Coyne at Jack Shainman and Diane Brown," Art in America 79, no. 12: 108–9 1990–91 Rebecca Solnit, "Dirt," Art Issues, no. 15 (December/January): 30–35 1990 Jan Avgikos, "The (Un)Making of Nature, Whitney Museum Downtown,"Artforum 29, no. 3 (November): 165–66 Charlotte Steifer Rubenstein, American Women Sculptors: A History of Women Working in Three Dimensions, Boston: G.K. Hall, 558–60 1989 Michael Kimmelman, "Petah Coyne/Brooklyn Museum," The New York Times, October 6 Patricia C. Phillips, "Petah Coyne/Brooklyn Museum, Jack Shainman Gallery," Artforum 27, no. 9 (December): 137 1988 Eleanor Heartney, "Elements: Five Installations," Artnews (April): 56 1987 Michael Brenson, "Petah Coyne," The New York Times, May 22 1984 E. R. Shipp, "Chicago Watches as 10 Sculptures Grow," The New York Times, October 2 1983 Grace Glueck, "Engaging Experiments Transform a Sandy Site," The New York Times, July 31 > Selected Awards2000 Sirus Project, Cobh, Ireland 1999 Exhibition award, AICA International Association of Art Critics 1998 Sculpture grant, Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York 1997 Acadia Art Program, Northeast Harbor, Maine 1995 Exhibition award, AICA International Association of Art Critics 1994 International exchange, U.S./Mexico Creative Artists’ Residency Grant, National Endowment for the Arts 1992–93 Japan fellowship, Asian Cultural Council, New York 1990 Sculpture fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts International exchange fellowship, France, National Endowment for the Arts Awards in the Visual Arts, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, North Carolina Bellagio residency, Italy, The Rockefeller Foundation 1989 Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York Artist grant, Art Matters, Inc., New York 1988 Sculpture fellowship, New York Foundation for the Arts New works grant, Massachusetts Council on the Arts and Humanities, Boston 1987 Artists grant, Pollack-Krasner Foundation, Inc., New York Sculpture fellowship, Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial Foundation, Cornish, New Hampshire Artists Space, Committee for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York 1986 Artists Space, Committee for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York 1984 Artists Space, Committee for the Visual Arts, Inc., New York  > Selected CollectionsAddison Gallery, Phillips Academy, Andover, Massachusetts Brooklyn Museum of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. The Detroit Institute of Arts High Museum of Art, Atlanta Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, North Carolina Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego The Museum of Modern Art, New York The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. The New School for Social Research, New York The Progressive Corporation, Cleveland The J. B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky Weatherspoon Art Gallery, Greensboro, North Carolina Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Link to: Catholicwomen.com

http://www.catholicwomen.com/

Link to: Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum

http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/

Link to: Taxidermy.net

taxidermy.net

From: Interview with Petah Coyne

Interview with Petah Coyne
Review, November 2005 issue
2,734 words

Petah Coyne
October 7, 2005-January 8, 2006
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art
Kansas City, MO

Hanging dried resin-coated fish and frayed hemp rope from the ceilings of her New York studio was a compulsive pastime for Petah Coyne at the beginning of her artistic career. In 1987 Coyne established her public emergence as a sculptor when she completed a six-week summer residency at the Sculpture Center with a mystical swampy installation that filled the gallery. In this exhibition, hay sacks were strung up to conical bundles of inverted trees and fabric to create standing forms reminiscent of primitive dwellings.

Following this key exhibition, Coyne has varied her sculptural materials throughout series that are defined by their distinctive groupings. Her sculptural materials have ranged from branches to wire, from shaved car hair to human and horsehair, from plaster Virgin Marys to black sand and oil, and from wax birds and flowers to mud. Her sculptures are commonly suspended from the ceiling, but she is also know for leaning and hanging pieces on the wall, or creating free standing sculpture. In 1991 she began exhibiting her black and white photographs, to discuss motion by using lingering shutter speeds.

Though her work has been shown throughout the United States and has been written about by prominent art critics such as Eleanor Heartney, her works have also maintained visibility in Kansas City through exhibitions at the Byron C. Cohen Gallery and articles by Keith Davis and Elisabeth Kirsch.

From September to November 2005 the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art is participating in a traveling retrospective organized by Douglas Dreishpoon (curator of the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York). This retrospective offers a valuable and fresh insight of Coyne’s career by featuring works from her prominent sculptural series as well as new work and photography. Before giving her Artist Talk at the museum, I was able to meet with Coyne for a moment and ask a few questions about the work she has created throughout her successful career.


Amelia Ishmael: How does it feel to be the featured artist of a traveling retrospective of this scale?

Petah Coyne: It gives you the opportunity to look back and to look forward at the same moment—which I think is a really beautiful gift. To see similarities, but also to see changes that you really want to occur in your work. It allows you to see your strengths and your weaknesses. It also pulls a lot of things out of different collections that I haven’t seen for a while because they’ve been across the country. To see them in relationship to the new work is a real treat.

AI: Is this one of the largest retrospectives that you’ve had?

PC: Yes. This is actually the first time that we’ve mixed all of the different periods together. We’ve had lots of traveling exhibitions, but they’ve always been a certain body of work—like all the hanging wax, or maybe there was an exhibition of just the very dark sand pieces.

AI: This oil piece [Untitled #634 Largest Oil Piece], did it use to have a really fragrant smell?

PC: That’s right, it doesn’t any longer. There’s a hole inside there that’s a metal container, and that used to hold used car oil. So it really was smelly—which I really liked because I love working with certain smells. But oil creeps, and by the end of the exhibition I could see it. It crept up the wall [of the piece] of the inside. What I didn’t want is to have it creep all over the whole piece. So instead, what we did was we took it all out, and we cleaned, sanded it all down and gave it a fresh coat. Because I wanted it preserved as it was. The oil would have eaten away at the piece, you know, over a long period of time. So that’s what we did, and it’s still called Big Oil.

AI: Has the experience of this latest retrospective created a new impression for you of the work that you have accomplished over the past 18 years?

PC: It is humbling, because you forget how much work you’ve done, and I work all the time. Also, a lot of people had seen different periods—like they’ve seen the hair, or the black sand, or the wax—but very few people have known it was one artist.

AI: What do you think is the most popular series?

PC: Oh, you’d be so surprised! People leech onto one period and that’s what they like, and they’re convinced that’s the only good period, but there’s no one period that wins out over the others.

AI: It is, because I’ve heard so much about the candle pieces!

PC: And some of the people only like the hay, and some of the people only like the hair, or the hair only creeps them out. And that only reinforces the idea that you just have to follow your own vision, and you can’t listen to anybody.

AI: Your usage and shifting of materials is one aspect that separates you from many other artists. The variations of materials, and their combinations, seem to define each new series. How do you decide when it is time to redefine your materials?

PC: It seems to be every four to five years. It takes a two-year incubation period where you’re just working with the materials, but your not producing anything. Then you shift and your finally able to control them, work with them, and use whatever properties are good. At that point you are able to make very vulnerable pieces, and pieces that are stronger—maybe pieces that are really finished. It’s really hard to shift, because you could just produce, and you could get known just for that, but I’m bored by that point.

AI: How do you find the materials that you want to go to next?

PC: Well, like this material over here [Untitled #695 (Ghost/First Communion)], do you know what material this is?

AI: Is that the shaved car hair?

PC: It’s the shaved cars. What I often do when I go to a lecture, I always ask the graduate students to take me somewhere unexpected that they find fascinating. This one student took me to a place […] where they totally dismantled everything, like locomotives… everything. And it was miles of piles that would fill this room of just, like bumpers, or stuff that you didn’t even recognize. It was just, like, debris. They were strapping these cars down a chute, and I asked if I could have some of it. They would compressed [the car shavings] and mashed it, and then send it to China to reconsolidated it back into liquid metal, and then send it back to the United States and make new cars. So I took it in that in-between stage and spayed it with black sand, so there’s a real black, kind of ghost, quality to it.

AI: When commencing a new piece, do you work with sketches to evolve the forms?

PC: I wish! No.

AI: So it’s all intuitive?

PC: Yes, unfortunately.

AI: Why unfortunately?

PC: It’s so much harder. You don’t know where you’re going! But you’ve just got to trust your instinct. Sometimes you’ve got to turn a piece upside-down or cut it in half. Like, this piece, [Untitled #1103 (Daphne)] was so short, and then she got taller and taller. I told my dealer, “no problem, she’s going to be very tall and thin,” and all of a sudden she started to get this skirt—and I tried to hold it back, hold it back, and then I said “ah, just forget it!” and it just flowed out. It’s like a child, I suppose, in a way, where it just becomes its own thing. It’s you, but it’s also many things.

AI: What is the process that you and your assistants go through during the creation of one of your sculptures?

PC: Oh, you don’t want to know that, do you? It’s difficult! Even when we know, like in this piece [Untitled #1103 (Daphne)] I knew she was going to be the roses and the wax—I mean, it took me almost a year. I worked on other pieces, but we figure I produce three or four pieces a year. It’s really slow. It’s very labor intensive. It is not a good way to make sculpture. But it’s my way, so I don’t try to change it.

AI: In the past, you would alter individual pieces to better fit the space that they were installed. Were there any alterations performed in response to this particular space [at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art]?

PC: Yes. On this piece, Three Tiered Chandelier, which I particularly like. It had been used for a dance performance. There’s big steel rings underneath it, where the dancers swung from it. And this piece too [Untitled #820 (MIT Peacocks)]. We lit them, and they swung across the room, and they were really beautiful. This one [Untitled #827 (Three Tiers)] can be greatly altered, depending on the rhythm you want of the three hats hanging over the big body. You can extend it, you can make it very short and squatty, you can put more or less bows, or none at all underneath. All that is kind of dictated by the space. But the pieces over all are generally already done, that’s it. A lot of them I don’t own any longer, so I can’t go around messing with it. They won’t allow that. So that becomes very problematic. None of these we really changed, but we did work hard to place them perfectly.

AI: What inspired the change between the chains—which I think is your oldest work, as opposed to the satin—which holds the newer work?

PC: I think of these as chandeliers often. In the 18th century they used to always cover the chandelier cable that held it from the ceiling in velvet. In fact, I saw in some big magazine, that’s a chain of really high-end furniture, that they’re now putting these velvet things on again. But I thought it would be much more beautiful to put it in satin, kind of like bridal satin, and really squash it down so it became a part of the piece, and part of the movement of the piece. I wanted it to look effortless. If it were chain, it wouldn’t look like it really connected, it wouldn’t be the same. But the chain works on those pieces, the satin wouldn’t work on those. Each piece kind of has to dictate what it is.

AI: The essence of time, in your work, alters during your transition between sculpture and photography. By using stalactite forms your sculptures seem to document time’s process, whereas your photography appears to distort time—similar to the work of Futurist photographer Bragaglia—by creating a shape representative of a motion. How do you mediate between these two forms of time?

PC: I look at it more like all the pieces are layered, they just have layer upon layer. As I make the pieces I move around them, so I’m continually circling these pieces and throwing just the right amount, and adding and subtracting, and cutting away, building back up. That’s very similar to the photography, in that the photography is conceptually based in that… when you and I have a discussion, what you say to me and what I say to you, maybe we cross over 10 percent, maybe not. But we think we understand each other completely, right? So it’s like your circle of thinking is going this way, and mine is going that, and the overlap is just that sliver. So, in all the photography, things are moving—going their way—and I’m usually running, or moving, or jumping—going another way—and for a nanosecond something crystallizes and becomes clear, but the rest is all lost. It’s never anything I expected, it’s always a surprise—as with meeting with anyone. It’s the same thing with the sculpture, it’s never anything I could have drawn before, it’s not anything I thought it would be. It has its own life, or its own memory, and its own time. For me all those things sort of mush. It’s just that, and then it isn’t anymore, it’s already past. It’s not just a blurry photograph; it’s about that movement and mine. Almost like Lartigue, when he was a little kid and he had those racecars. The car would be going this way, and he’d be going that way—you’d get just a second of it being really in focus, and everything’s out of focus. I’ve always loved his things. And this is a little twist on that.

AI: Are your subject matters as important as the shapes you’re getting out of them?

PC: To me they are. Whether people know that, or just get a sense of that, it doesn’t really matter. I’ve tried to just present what’s the most honest. If people come open to the pieces then they hopefully infuse their life into it—and that also layers the work. We have these monks [Untitled #738 (Monks 1)], and I’ll always see them as monks. They ran praying from tree to tree, and I thought they were so beautiful and I chased them for two or three days. But when we first exhibited these someone said, “oh, it’s an insane asylum with women” and I looked and I thought “wow, that’s really interesting that they thought that.” It was just souls and they were seeing a different side of souls.

AI: It does sort of look like Arbus’s last photo…

PC: Yeah, it does!

AI: One of the sculptures that deviate from this documentation aspect is Little Ed’s Daughter Margaret—that isn’t here—which incorporates a crying plaster figure. What was the inspiration for that tear?

PC: It was part serious and part humorous—which is always in my work. It’s a bit of a spoof on all these religious things that people see in like Chicago or Boston. I love that, I love that people see that. Maybe it’s there, and I’m not holy enough to see it. But I also think that it’s very funny. So I think it’s humorous, but also magical, because she only cried once or twice a day and only two or three tears. Her face was very dark, so you could barely see it. It was set on a timer that was really sporadic; it just did it when it wanted. So maybe it occurred in the middle of the night. I love that idea that if no one was there to witness it, it did it happen.

AI: What techniques do you use to capture the images that you are after photographically? You’ve said you run with them…

PC: …or jump off ladders while they’re going another way. Or, that first one over there [Untitled #885 (Saucer Baby)] is my little niece and we were throwing her and her inter-tube over the pool. She has a look in her eyes that’s both horror filled and thrilled at the same moment, I was jumping in the pool with these hand-made cameras that I had.

AI: The titles of your works are often formatted “Untitled, numbered, subtitled,” this method is often used by artists who wish to leave their visual qualities unbound by representational associations. Yet your subtitles (such as Gertrude and Juliana… or Black Atlanta) seem despondent through their specificity. How do you imagine your viewers drawing a connection between the work and the subtitles?

PC: Well, this is the first show that we’ve actually put the subtitles in, and the reason is that it was getting very confusing with the numbers and I had private names for all of them. We all knew the private names, and we’d always call them that because I couldn’t remember the numbers. The numbers were more for cataloguing, we have them catalogued under the number and so they’ll always have the number. And now we put in parentheses, meaning it’s this private name—but anymore it doesn’t matter if you know it or not.

AI: What about the hair one [Untitled #927 (BZ-CD-Put-Put)]? Are those all initials?

PC: BZ and CD, those are the childhood names of my siblings.

AI: And what was Put-Put?

PC: That was […] and if you tell anyone I’ll […]!

From: Bomb Magazine: Petah Conye by Lynne Tillman

Petah Coyne, Untitled 1017P01, 2001, Gelatin silver print, dimensions variable. Courtesy of Julie Saul Gallery, New York

From: International Sculpture Center- Sculpture- Controlled Passion- A Conversation with Petah Coyne

June 2002 Vol.21 No.5 A publication of the International Sculpture Center   Controlled Passion:  A Conversation with Petah Coyne by Jan Garden Castro “This looks like art,” a tough-talking policeman pronounced, looking around at the fairyland of wax-bathed figures, birds, chandeliers, scarlet and blue feathers, worldly and otherworldly forms. Petah Coyne’s “White Rain” exhibition had a visceral immediacy not easily communicated in photographs. She draws heavily on art and literature, Catholic legends, and intuition to create her seductive, visionary worlds. “White Rain” was conceived as a female and an American response to the “black rain” from the fall-out after the bombing of Hiroshima at the end of World War II; its message is eerily relevant to New York in 2002. Installation view of “White Rain,” installed at Galerie Lelong, 2001. Coyne’s work is in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the High Museum, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art. In addition to solo and group exhibitions at these institutions, she has shown at Galerie Lelong, the Dublin Museum of Modern Art, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, the Moscow Institute of Contemporary Art, and the Centre International d’Art Contemporain de Montréal. She received an honorary doctorate from the Cincinnati Art Academy in 2001 and has been awarded prestigious fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Asian Cultural Council. Current projects include a solo exhibition at the Frist Center for Contemporary Art in Nashville and an installation in “Artists Take on Detroit” at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Among future projects, Coyne will exhibit at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in 2003, and a survey of her work will travel in 2005. Jan Castro: You told one interviewer that in medieval Catholicism, birds take the soul to heaven. In “White Rain,” the work Josephina features a figure being swallowed by a funnel of scarlet birds. What are your associations here? Petah Coyne: I’ve always been interested in birds, and this exhibition has both real birds and birds that I’ve made by hand. The red birds on top of Josephina are actually discarded feathers. They have been dyed red and put back together. The feathers came out of China about 10 years ago. They’re incredibly crafted. For me, the figure’s head is being consumed by the birds. Not long after that, her body. It’s a funnel coming down, at least that’s my impression of it, and the victim will be swallowed up or taken away—very much like what we were taught about the Holy Spirit in Catholicism: it approached, consumed, and then you were transformed into something else. That, coupled with Catholic cardinals, who wear impressive red hats. When a cardinal dies, his hat is taken and hung from a rope at the top of his cathedral, next to those of his predecessors. When the rope gets old and rots, the hat falls to the ground. This is to remind the current cardinal that he, too, is human and will be judged—a warning to use the power the church has placed in his hands with great care. Untitled #992S–01 (Descent), 2000–2001. Mixed media, 88 x 109 x 7 in. I thought this was a beautiful synthesis. It relates to the piece called Descent, which is about a lone female figure descending to Hell. She is passing a whole group of niches, each filled with birds over 100 years old. My interpretation is that the birds are waiting. They’re in purgatory; they’re watching. They’re beautiful—they were real birds and have been preserved. As in Catholicism, the soul is gone, the body remains. In one of these niches, next to one of my favorite birds, I’ve actually buried my grandmother’s pearls, pearls I lusted after as a child. You can see them. They are earthly goods. Giving an offering, a ransom of sorts, to see if I could stop her descent is similar to praying for a soul in purgatory or limbo. For some reason, this particular person wasn’t good enough to get into heaven, so she’s making her descent. Through that descent, the most painful part is being surrounded by all of this beauty, all of the things of which she will soon be deprived. Then only Hell and a faint longing will remain. JGC: The birds are really 100 years old? PC: Yes. They’re from a Canadian museum that has closed. It’s a very Catholic idea to take a thing that is considered trash, basically no good, and to re-energize it and give it new life. Even though they have long been dead, the birds seem beautiful to me. Each one contains a personality, the residue of a life lived. That relates to a book by Yasunari Kawabata, House of the Sleeping Beauties. It’s about a very old man who goes to a secret house for old men. There, they pay to sleep with drugged virgin women, who never move. The mingling of death and eroticism is at times suffocating, yet the author intrigues us with his description of each “sleeping beauty.” Maybe it’s how her skin looks or a perfume she wears, but each comes alive with a full and complete personality. That’s exactly how I perceive those long-dead birds. JGC: That brings us to the work about the two Marys. PC: Mary/Mary began with a statue of the Virgin Mary. She was facing the wall, and I was trying to make her gown very full, almost as if she were transcending. I was speaking a lot that summer with a good friend named Mary, who was, coincidentally, pregnant. She kept commenting on her size and saying how big she had gotten. One day, I looked up and realized that I had made this particular Virgin Mary pregnant, a synthesis of my friend and the Virgin, which is why I call her Mary/Mary. Untitled #945S–01 (Chinese Landscape), 1992–2001. Mixed media, 103 x 117 x 350 in. I should probably say that my use of Catholic imagery is partly tongue-in-cheek and partly irrational fear that all the dogma may, in fact, be true. I try to use both my humor and my horror of it all. I like that edge. Because of all the stories the nuns told us as children, I think of the Virgin Mary as the representation of “all women”—the best any woman can be. We were told that we should be exactly like her or at least aspire to be that ideal type of woman. So, I look at her and see all the things I would have liked to have been, but also all the things I can never be. This longing for perfection and the impossibility of its complete attainment seem clearly figured in this piece. I actually cut apart a chain link fence, and although I covered it in silk flowers to give it beauty, a seduction of sorts, it still does its job, keeping the viewer at bay. The face of Mary/Mary is barely visible, only if one really cranes one’s neck. And even then, her face is dripped in thick wax, barely discernible against the wall. This is how the Catholic church presents its most sacred images, almost there, but mostly hidden. JGC: Chinese Landscape has another hidden figure. To me, that was a stunning and tender work. The surprise of seeing the Madonna hidden in the crevice in the wax was a little unsettling. It reminded me of Duchamp’s Étant donnés. PC: That was exactly my intention. It’s the flip side of Duchamp, but no less erotic. His work was from the male point of view and mine is from the female. It took us over five years to make that piece. We started in ’97 or ’98. She used to be more exposed. We made the front of the wall, and I never felt that it was quite right. It sat for maybe a year, and then I knew what I needed to do. Originally, that piece started out at four by two by two feet. Then it grew to eight by four by one. That wasn’t good enough, and it had to be eight by 10 by one. It finally ended up 10 by 10 by two feet. JGC: Let’s talk about the technical aspects—your special wax and the construction of the base. PC: All of my pieces seem fragile. But that is deceiving, because they’re all begun with steel understructures. Yet I want each one to look incredibly delicate and to have that feminine sense of appearing soft and seductive. But as any number of women have shown, we have an internal strength and drive that is hard to fathom. As far as the wax is concerned, I always use a commercial chemist to make the formulas. I expect this work to have its own lifetime, long past my own. Each flower we attach is made from silk, and each bird wing is rewired so that nothing can fall apart. Untitled #989S–01 (Miss Scarlet), 1999–2001. Mixed media, 82 x 52 x 26 in. JGC: What about your exquisite surfaces? PC: For a number of years, I had been using what we call “chandelier wax,” made for the pieces that hang in the air. But making a wall wax is a very different animal. The chemist had to invent a new formula. To get the surface texture, we often scar the work with razors, and we are not beyond sculpting those drips ourselves. I’ve studied Chinese landscape painting, especially the work done in the 16th and 17th centuries. That is the period I love most. When I began working on Chinese Landscape, I stepped back, as I often do, and immediately recognized its sources—the feel of the landscape paintings, the lengthening that can stretch across vast areas. On the front of the piece, there’s a seagull covered in black silk ribbons. Seagulls seem almost clumsy in how they take off and land, and I thought it would be a challenge to take something so awkward and make it seem graceful. I’m hoping that people don’t recognize exactly what the imagery is from the front. It’s only when they go around the back that more is revealed. But you’d be surprised at how few people look inside. We lit it by cutting a hole in the front that sent light through to the back, illuminating just a bit of the figure. JGC: I’ve read that you were home-schooled. Could you describe your art education? PC: My mother is a writer. In my early years, we traveled all over the world because my father was military. Everywhere we went, my mother always made us live in “real” neighborhoods—no army bases for us. She absolutely did not want to raise a troop of “army brats.” In Germany, we lived in the German neighborhoods. In Ohio, we lived with the Amish for a summer. In every location, we were encouraged to study the beliefs and customs. I always felt more connected through these experiences. When I was very young, we lived in Hawaii in a Japanese neighborhood. That was the home I loved the most. My mother was a great teacher, but not in the traditional sense. To get us interested in visuals and reading, she would take every opportunity to expose us to real life. Once when a large whale had beached itself on Waikiki Beach, she ran to get us out of school. Moving us as close as she dared, she told us to pretend we could put our hands on the whale and feel its labored breath. Then she took us home and read us Moby Dick. The images came alive for us in a really profound way. I didn’t like school at all; I felt like I never fit in. My parents told me that if I didn’t want to go to school, I had to figure out a way, within the system, to not go and they’d stand behind me. The easiest solution seemed to be to test out of classes. So my mother began to tutor us in the summers. Every room was a different lesson. One would be the history room, another the math room, and we’d move from room to room every 45 minutes. We really hated doing this in the summer while all of our friends were playing. But throughout the school year, I only signed in for homeroom and then immediately left school to work on my art. Once when I wanted to do some bronze casting, my mother took me to the local foundry, and we learned how to cast and pour bronze. She was a great role model, fashioning whatever was needed to reach our goal. Untitled #978(s)–99/00, 1999–2000. Mixed media, 144 x 206 x 53 in. JGC: How did you become interested in Japanese literature? PC: My parents had been to Japan a number of times and always brought back treasures. Captivated by their stories, I read a lot of Japanese literature. Then in 1991, the Asian Cultural Council, an arm of the Rockefeller Foundation, gave me a fellowship. For six months I was able to just travel and observe; nothing was asked of me. Being there and reading a book every day, or at least a book every other day, I began to understand Japanese thought much more clearly. Often as I read and wandered about the country, I couldn’t remember if I’d lived the things I thought about or read them. Today my greatest pleasure is reading Japanese literature; it’s my secret escape. JGC: How have you expressed sexual difference in “White Rain”? PC: Women and men are so different, and I think that we address different issues in our writings and in our vision. Because this is the first century of women sculptors of any kind of quantity, the differences between the genders are more apparent. I enjoy looking at and thinking about these differences. In many of the art schools, it seems 75 to 80 percent of the sculptors are women. Why is that? Possibly because we have no history, we’re totally free to make our own history. And we’re making a different history, which is thrilling to me. I don’t express ideas consciously. It’s more when you step back. At mid-life, this exhibition is very much about looking back and looking forward at the same time. Recently, I moved my studio, and all of my works passed before my eyes. I began to pick and choose different materials from those I had used in the past. Materials such as black sand, birds and feathers, soil and flowers, chicken wire, and even the statue of the Virgin, which I first used in 1984, came back in this body of work. In the last year or two, my ideas are more about architecture, and sculptures leaning against the wall or becoming walls themselves. There’s a piece that for me is extremely tender, “sisters” or “twins.” It’s about my sister BZ and I, and our family connections. BZ is holding a perfectly formed baby, and my child is headless and broken. Nonetheless, just a different kind of baby, one that is more interesting to me. We’re all in a puddle, melting together. It’s the melting that’s so beautiful—and sad. Beauty comes when you least expect it, and that beauty is the kind I love most, although often I am criticized for it. Seduction and the power to seduce cannot rely just on that beauty. It must be poised to reveal yet another layer, possible a darker layer but, at the very least, something more. Untitled #996S–01 (Sister/Twins), 2001. Mixed media, 111 x 80 x 37 in. That was the impetus for this body of work based on Masuji Ibuse’s book Black Rain, which is named for the rain that fell after the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. Those who returned to look for their family members found their skin stained from it. And even though they had not been at Ground Zero when the bomb fell, they too would eventually get “the sickness.” This illness rendered you a social outcast who needed to be hidden from neighbors and friends. The exhibition is called “White Rain.” As an American, I felt I also had a staining from the atomic bomb, a responsibility for it. There is a sadness in creating all this. I felt as if the white rain was mine to carry, just as the black rain was theirs. On September 11th as I watched victims walk up Broadway away from the devastation, I could not help but think of Butoh. Everyone in the vicinity was covered in white ash, which was literally the pulverization of the buildings, including the ashes of the people who were caught in them. It’s still hard to say this, but this image of Butoh, the dance of the dead, born in Japan in 1959 to portray anger and rage after Hiroshima, was now here also. The porcelain white with which the dancers cover themselves ironically exposes them and the humanity of their souls. JGC: In Kabuki, too. PC: Yes, but Kabuki is much older. Butoh is about violence, sexuality, repressed anger. In its infancy it was never supposed to be performed in theaters, but in alleyways, in the forests, or on rooftops. It is much wilder, which fits with its character, a total abandonment of the traditional formal Japan. I think that’s what has happened to us. I hope that September 11th will make us better humans. Already New York is a nicer place to live, even though it’s much more frightening. Every day when the wind blew the right way, we could smell the smoke. You almost couldn’t breathe because of the mixture of emotions that overwhelmed you. I do not believe anyone living here will be able to smell fire again and not have a wave of sickness come over them. JGC: You’ve worked with interns on various projects, but you’ve also said that you need to develop your work over time, without consulting others. Could you discuss the need to work without consulting others? Or is this still the case? Untitled #961S99–01 (Mary/Mary), 1999–2001. Mixed media, 104 x 84 x 310 in. PC: I have three assistants, and they’re all part time, because they’re artists themselves. When we are in the studio, I’ve asked them not to say anything about my work, on any level. I don’t need to know what they think. When you’re in your studio, you’re at your most vulnerable. I want it to be completely my sensibility. To get to that place—to be able to be free—you have to be completely comfortable with your surroundings. I try to use and trust my own instincts. For myself, I can go to that space, and I know exactly what I need to do. When I’m out in public, finishing the piece, I again go to that place. I’ve learned where it is. It’s that zone, maybe our subconscious, and I trust it, more than I trust anything else. I’m trying to use that instinct more in my personal life. I think women in particular are given this intuitive instinct. My male sculptor friends know less what I’m talking about when I refer to it. My women friends know exactly. But the tragically humorous part is that we don’t trust this, our greatest gift. I can still hear my mother’s voice: “You have this incredible instinctual power and you must learn to trust it.” So that’s what I try to do. Sometimes I don’t even look at it, I just make it. That’s my collaboration—with the outer limits