The Writing’s on the Wall Language and Silence in the Visual Arts
December 12, 2024 – March 29, 2025
Curated by Hilton Als, this group exhibition presents artists whose work explores the relationships between communication and language. In the curatorial text, Als explains: “for this exhibition, I wanted to show what silence looked like—at least to me—and what words looked like to artists.”
“Writing and erasure have been important sources of inspiration for many of the artists in my family’s collection, including Christopher Wool, Rudolf Stingel, Vija Celmins, and Cy Twombly,” says J. Tomilson Hill, President of the Hill Art Foundation. “Hilton Als has identified a fascinating motif and introduced important loans to illustrate the rich history of these lines of inquiry into the present day.”
In his accompanying essay, Poetics of Silence, Als probes the power of visual art to skirt the written or spoken word. The works included convey “the sense we have when language isn’t working,” evoke “EKGs of rhythm followed by silence, or surrounded by it,” reveal “painting as language’s subtext,” illustrate “what we mean to say as opposed to what gets said,” and “find beauty in the tools that one uses to erase words—and then to make new ones.” He reflects on his own entry into the art world as an art history student at Columbia in the 1980s, and his efforts as a writer and curator to create a democratic “language of perception” that transcends traditional connoisseurship.
The Writing’s on the Wall encompasses a range of mediums, from video installation to printed zine. Artists in the exhibition include Ina Archer, Kevin Beasley, Jared Buckhiester, Vija Celmins, Sarah Charlesworth, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Fang: Betsi-Nzaman, Ellen Gallagher, Joel Gibb and Paul P., Rachel Harrison, Ray Johnson, G.B. Jones and Paul P., Jennie C. Jones, Christopher Knowles, Willem de Kooning, Sherrie Levine, Judy Linn, Christian Marclay, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Claes Oldenburg, Ronny Quevedo, Irving Penn, Umar Rashid, Medardo Rosso, David Salle, Rudolf Stingel, Cy Twombly, Andy Warhol, Steve Wolfe, Larry Wolhandler, and Christopher Wool.
Learn more here
Jennie C. Jones: A Free and Shifting Tonal Center
I always say [the art is] active even when there’s no sound in the room; they are affecting the subtlest of sounds in the space—dampening and absorbing even the human voice.
– Jennie C. Jones
A Free and Shifting Tonal Center is Jennie C. Jones’s first monograph, exploring her interdisciplinary practice that moves viewers through both visual and auditory engagement. Aurally altering the spaces in which her paintings, sculptures, and installations are on view, Jones’s work encourages viewers to anticipate sound even in the quietest of environments.
Conceptually, Jones’s practice reflects on the legacies of modernism and minimalism while underscoring the connection between minimalism and music, illuminating the influence of the Black avant-garde. Bringing this multi-sensory experience to book form, A Free and Shifting Tonal Center unites documentation of recent exhibitions—including Dynamics, her expansive show at the Guggenheim Museum (2022)—with excerpts of text, poetry, and conversations to create a “score” that reveals the layers of Jones’s artwork. Part artist’s book and part primer, this lyrical volume unfolds in movements, like a printed and bound evening of poetry, prose, and music.
Artwork by Jennie C. Jones
Text by Grace Deveney and Evelyn C. Hankins
Agnes Martin: Independence of Mind
I think we’ve fallen into an elaborate but beneficent trap that Agnes Martin has set for us. She gives the paintings these titles so that when you speak of them, you can say something like, “I love Happiness” or “I’m very moved by Innocence” or “I came around a corner and saw Friendship.” She’s giving us language in an unembarrassed way, so that things can happen to us when we actually say those words.
– Teju Cole
This is a re-envisioned, fresh look at Agnes Martin, the enigmatic, influential, highly independent painter whose life (1912–2004) spanned much of the twentieth century and extended into the twenty-first. Martin’s abstract, deceptively simple paintings continue to resonate with contemporary artists and writers. In a series of essays commissioned especially for this volume, the contributors write about Martin’s influence on their creative lives and work, and offer new interpretations that defy stereotyped notions about Martin’s life. The result is a varied tapestry of voices, proving that Martin’s art still influences the contemporary world, and offering glimpses into modes of being and making that are still relevant nearly two decades after her death.
Texts by Teju Cole, Bethany Hindmarsh, Bill Jacobson, Jennie C. Jones, James Sterling Pitt, Alison Rossiter, Jenn Shapland, Darcey Steinke, Martha Tuttle, and Susan York
