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DOCUMENT is pleased to present Supports/Surfaces: Objects of Knowledge, which features historical and recent work by Louis Cane, Noël Dolla and Claude Viallat. These three artists were members of Supports/Surfaces, a shifting group of some twelve painters, many of whom hailed from the South of France, who began collaborating and showing together in 1966. Central to Supports/Surfaces was the systematic interrogation (and, in many cases, separation) of the medium’s constituent components: paint, canvas, and stretcher. The group showed both within art institutions and in outdoor, sometimes remote locations, distributing their paintings in the landscape with guerrilla idealism. The group was influenced by radical thinking from various, even oppositional quarters, matching the utopian dreaming of May ‘68 with the uncompromising critical theory of Louis Althusser and the Tel Quel group. Supports/Surfaces artists devised signature approaches even as they actively sought common strategies. Viallat stenciled kidney bean-like forms into grids on unframed and unstretched canvases that could be hung on a gallery wall, the middle of a room, or outside in public space. Dolla’s Tarlatanes, strips of painted canvas hung from the ceiling, played on Barnett Newman’s modernist “zips,” liberating them from all constraints–yet he also made a point of painting on everyday materials such as handkerchiefs and dishtowels. Cane’s Toiles Découpées (Cut Canvases) spilled onto the floor from their positions on the wall, aiming for simultaneous absorption and materiality. Supports/Surfaces: Objects of Knowledge will revisit these artists’ past work while also making note of the subtle evolution of their practices up through the present day.

  • Claude Viallat, 2016/188, 2016, Acrylic on fabric fragment

Available Works

Elizabeth Atterbury

Elizabeth Atterbury (born 1982, West Palm Beach, FL) lives and works in Portland, Maine. Recent solo and group shows include Kate Werble Gallery, New York; The Portland Museum of Art, Portland; Mrs., Queens; The Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville; kijidome, Boston; Document, Chicago; Western Exhibitions, Chicago; The Luminary, St Louis; Et al. Etc., San Francisco; Pulaski Park Field House, Chicago; Able Baker Contemporary, Portland; Ida Schmid, Brooklyn; TSA, Brooklyn; Bodega, Philadelphia/New York; KANSAS, New York; and The ICA at Maine College of Art, Portland, among others. In the Middle, An Oasis, a monograph of her work, was published by Bodega Press in 2013. She received her BA from Hampshire College and her MFA from MassArt.

Atterbury’s studio practice is fluid, fluctuating between picture making and object making. Fascinated with the autonomy of the artifact – objects disassociated from their original function and context – Atterbury’s practice considers the distinction or lack thereof between artifact, prop, model and sculpture.  Drawn to materials such as paper and sand, Atterbury constructs ephemeral tableaux specifically for the purpose of transfiguring and recording them. Both her photographs and sculpture build upon a continued interest in display and its visual structures, along with a more recent interest in language, ritual, and abstraction.

Installation view, Night Comes In, 2018, Mrs., New York, Clockwise from the floor: Arrangement 1 (Discoveries), 2018, Mixed media, Dimensions variable; Beads III, 2018, Peach pits, 61.5 x 1 x 1 inches; River Poem, 2018, Mortar, plywood, glue, 23 x 19 x 1 inches

Em Oh Em, 2017, Beach Sand, basswood 8.5 x 3.5 x 2.25 inches (each)

Dog, 2018, Pine, 16 x 3.125 x 3.75 inches

Urn, 2018, Basswood, ash, 7 x 7 x 3.625 inches

Installation view, Night Comes In, 2018, Mrs., New York, Left: Bronze Chop (Large), 2018, Bronze, 21.75 x 3.375 x 3.25 inches Right: Urn, 2018, Basswood, ash, 7 x 7 x 3.625 inches

Elizabeth Atterbury, 26 Waves, 2018, Mortar, plywood and glue, 22 3/4 x 19 x 1 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Alone at night, 2018, Mortar, plywood and glue, 23 x 19 x 1 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Still life with bowl and mirror, 2018, Mortar, plywood and glue, 23 x 19 x 1 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Anonymous Old Poem, 2018, Mortar, plywood and glue, 23 x 19 x 1 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Another Poem, 2018, Mortar, plywood and glue, 23 x 19 x 1 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Calligraphy Frame, 2018, Maple, acrylic paint, glue, 60 x 40 x 1 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, The Well, Again (Pool), 2017, Beach sand, glue, MDF, 10 1/2 x 8 x 6 1/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, The Well, The Wall, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Beach Woks (Marks of a Tool II), 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Still Life with Popcorn and Pits, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Logogram III, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Logogram II, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Logogram I, 2016, Silver gelatin print, 20 x 24 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Tomb), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 12 x 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (The Cut), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 13 1/2 x 28 1/2 x 1 1/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Sunset Hedge), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 1 1/2 x 16 x 2 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Small House), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 1 x 16 3/4 x 14 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Bull Shark), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 2 1/2 x 18 x 1 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Paper Cut / Hedge), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 10 x 9 x 1 3/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Noguchi's Intetra, Mist Fountain), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 11 x 9 1/2 x 9 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Lawn), 2016, Enamel paint, steel 9 x 9 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Big House), 2016, Enamel paint, steel, 16 x 18 x 6 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sunny Side, FL (Palms), 2015, Enamel paint, steel, 17 1/2 x 11 x 16 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Relief (China White), 2015, Plywood and paint, 33 x 48 x 1 3/4 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Moonlight on the river, 2014, Chromogenic print, 14 x 11 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Slow Song, 2014, Chromogenic print, 14 x 11 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Marks of a tool, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Rake, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 24 x 20 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Ghost Tracks, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 24 x 20 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Black Beach, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 13 1/2 x 11 1/2 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterbury, Bones, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in, Edition of 3

Elizabeth Atterburym Glyphs II, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Glyphs, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Site, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Sculpture Park, 2014, Silver gelatin print, 11 x 14 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Bricks, 2013 Chromogenic print, 13 1/2 x 11 1/2 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Harry, Henri, Sal, 2013, Chromogenic print, 14 x 11 in

Elizabeth Atterbury, Blue Runner Night, 2014, Chromogenic print, 13 1/2 x 11 1/2 in, Editon of 3

Toile découpée, 1970 Huile sur toile metissée Oil on canvas 197 x 250 cm 77.6 x 98.4 in

Peinture vraiment Résine sur grillage Resin on stainless steel mesh 145 x 145 cm 57.1 x 57.1 in abstraite, 2017

In 1969 Louis Cane’s first gallery exhibition (Givaudan, Paris) consisted of a group of unstretched canvases– sheets in fact, marked only by continuous rubber stamping of his name. He concluded this exercise in personal branding with the insolently tautological series Louis Cane artiste peintre français.
By 1970 Cane was done with youthful irony, inaugurating a genre of cut-out paintings, the toiles découpées, which he would exploit for several years. Like Jackson Pollock or Helen Frankenthaler, Louis Cane painted on unstretched canvas on the ground. But Cane digested the mentor of these artists, Clement Greenberg, as fast as the avant-garde critic appeared in Peinture: cahiers théoriques, the cutting-edge magazine published by Cane and his radical associates.

Cane’s incision in the canvas produces flaps which open a space on the wall. This space is not part of the painting yet remains integral to the picture. Thus, his paintings, which interact with both the floor plane and the wall, investigate the space of non-representation (what is cut out) and integrate it within the painting.
Last century, one saw these paintings as the formalist realization of a praxis. Today we are more tempted to admire the economy of means and the visual polyvalence. Back then, Louis Cane questioned pictorial space by considering Chinese painting. To liberate himself from the conventions of Renaissance perspective without renouncing pictorial space it was necessary to start with discourse. Today only the painting endures, and with it the work’s persisting pertinence.

1709 W Chicago avenue
Chicago, IL 60622
312-535-4555

Owner
Aron Gent
aron@documentspace.com
Director
Sibylle Friche
sibylle@documentspace.com
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Private Works Login
DOCUMENT is a commercial gallery located in Chicago that specializes in contemporary photography, film and media based art. The gallery has organized more than 40 solo exhibitions since its opening in 2011 and actively promotes the work of emerging national and international artists. Operating conjointly as a professional printmaking studio, DOCUMENT facilitates the production of works by artists from Chicago and the US. At this time we do not accept unsolicited submissions.