GRAY to Present EVELYN STATSINGER: CURRENTS. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

Opening in New York this spring, GRAY will present Evelyn Statsinger: Currents.

GRAY presents the work of American artist Evelyn Statsinger (1927-2016) in the solo exhibition, Currents. Curated by New York-based writer and curator Dan Nadel, Currents features Statsinger's paintings and drawings from the 1980s and 90s, a period in which she developed her most immersive and otherworldly compositions.

Evelyn Statsinger was an artist deeply informed by her impressions of the natural world. Born in Brooklyn in 1927, Statsinger relocated to Chicago in the 1940s to attend the School of the Art Institute. During this time, Statsinger became acquainted with a group of artists known as the Monster Roster and received mentorship and support from notable Chicago figures including Katherine Kuh, Kathleen Blackshear, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

In 1972, Statsinger moved her Chicago studio to a rural 1890s schoolhouse in Allegan, Michigan. The remote property, nestled within the sand dunes and woodlands on the eastern shores of Lake Michigan, served as the artist's home base and allowed Statsinger to closely observe nature in all its orders of magnitude. "When Statsinger would return to downtown Chicago, she imported the outdoors to the city by bringing with her those specially observed bits of matter," Nadel reflects. "She collected seed pods, shells, twigs, leaves, and stones, which she arranged carefully in her studio. She could go macro or micro with these specimens-making them a subject or finding new details within them."

At times mysterious, and eluding definitive classification, Statsinger's intricate compositions describe vast, ethereal worlds that evoke the biological systems and cellular structures of plants as if viewed under a microscope. As art historian Dennis Adrian observed, "The forms which the artist favors often seem drawn from microscopic plant life, the exotic fauna of the sea or from the layered and crystalline structures of the earth itself. Statsinger's subtle and reverberating colors make ingenious use of unexpected complements and harmonic arrangements in a way that brings to mind the marvelous chromatics of odd biological specimens or rare minerals."

GRAY has also announced the release of the forthcoming publication, Evelyn Statsinger: Currents, featuring an essay by curator Dan Nadel, numerous color illustrations, and a detailed biography on the artist.

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