The Donald Young Gallery invites you to a reception celebrating Donald Young, the final exhibition in the Robert Walser series and the publication release of A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser. The last nine months have brought work of contemporary artists and the writings of the Swiss author, Robert Walser (1878-1956), together with archival material including first edition books by Walser, facsimiles of his microscripts and photographs of the author. Participating artists include Peter Fischli and David Weiss (December), Moyra Davey (January), Thomas Schütte (February), Rosemarie Trockel (March), Tacita Dean and Mark Wallinger (April) and Rodney Graham and Josiah McElheny (September 2012).

Sourcing inspiration from the notion of reading, Rodney Graham touches on themes present in Walser’s writings and his own practice. Titled Sunday Sun (2012), Graham’s new light box features a figure reading a newspaper in bed. The same periodical seen in Graham’s 2011 work, The Avid Reader, the image signals the artist’s return to the early 20th century with the Vancouver Sun’s “funny papers’ from 1938. The innocuous scene belies a second layer of visual history, with Graham’s take on a classic cinematic trick. A second glance reveals two different hands, and thus, two individuals hiding behind the comic pages. A reference to the 1938 film The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock), the still mines the realms of literature, art and cinema with Graham’s inclination for deft imagery.

Josiah McElheny presents two works based on a short story by Robert Walser, A Painter’s Life from 1916. The first work, Imaginary Paintings consists of seven antique, period frames together in a group on the wall. Each wood frame has a small hand-lettered brass plaque with the name of a painting or drawing from the story; the interior of each frame is “glazed” with tinted multi-chrome wavy glass that shows only the wall behind. Focusing on the tension between imagination and biography in Walser, Imaginary Paintings proposes that simply the title and color atmosphere of a painting might stand in for all that we remember of an image.

Following this is McElheny’s suite of prints A Painter’s Life, consisting of eight “pages of a book” printed letterpress. Next to a fold and some holes, evidence of their removal from a book, is a title page; on subsequent pages are empty hand-drawn frames of varying proportions, each for a picture illustration and captioned below with the name of the painting. Here is the briefest sequential narrative, told only through the general shape of an image and a few words, outlining a life spent depicting observations of nature and the arc of that life, from “A Dream” to a painting called “The Farewell”.

A Little Ramble: In the Spirit of Robert Walser is a project initiated by the gallerist Donald Young who saw in Robert Walser an exemplary figure through whom connections between art and literature could be discussed anew. He invited a group of artists to respond to the writing of Robert Walser. This book is a result of that collaboration. The publication includes excerpts from Wandering with Walser, conversations with Walser recorded by his guardian Carl Seelig. Much of this material appears here for the first time in English. Accompanying these writings are over fifty color reproductions of artworks created specifically for this project, an introduction by Donald Young, and an afterword by Lynne Cooke.

A Little Ramble is a co-publication of Donald Young Gallery, Christine Burgin Gallery and New Directions Publishing

Rodney Graham

Rodney Graham was born in Vancouver in 1949 and has exhibited internationally since the 1970s including numerous touring survey exhibitions in Europe and North America, most recently showing at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2012), and the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain; Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany (2010). He has participated in landmark exhibitions, representing Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1997, and exhibiting at documenta IX in 1992 and at Sculpture Project Muenster in 1987. His work is part of major collections from international institutions including The Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Gallery, Centre Georges Pompidou, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Josiah McElheny

Josiah McElheny lives and works in New York. He has exhibited widely including recent solo museum projects at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2012), The Whitechapel Gallery, London (2011), Harvard Arts Museum, Cambridge (2011), Tate Gallery, London (2010), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2009), Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2008), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2007), and MoMA, New York (2007). Recent books include, “A Space for an Island Universe”, published by the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía and Turner Publications (2009), “Prism”, a significant monograph published by Rizzoli (2010) and “The Light Club”, an artist’s book published by the University of Chicago (2010).

Together with the Goethe-Institut Chicago, the Donald Young Gallery hosted a symposium on Robert Walser in February 2012 with the support of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and the Swiss Consulate Chicago. The exhibition is in collaboration with Christine Burgin, New York, The Robert Walser Centre, Bern and Konrad Aeschbacher, Erlach. If you would like more information please contact Emily Letourneau or Robyn Farrell at 312-322-3600 or gallery@donaldyoung.com.

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Tags: Donald Young, Donald Young Gallery, Josiah McElheny, Robert Walser, Rodney Graham