Opening reception: Thursday, September 14, 6–8pm TO LIGHT, AND THEN RETURN— Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann

Comunicato Stampa disponibile solo in lingua originale. 

and hold the wick of mine to it
to light, and then return—
—Emily Dickinson

NEW YORK, August 3, 2023—An exhibition of new works by #edmunddewaal and #sallymann inspired by each other's practices will open at Gagosian, 976 Madison Avenue, on September 14, 2023. to light, and then return— marks the first time the two artists have shown together in a dedicated exhibition.The result of an ongoing exchange between two artists who are also celebrated writers, the exhibition is titled after the final line of "The spry arms of the wind" (c. 1866), a poem written by Emily Dickinson on an envelope scrap. Informed by their mutual fascination with material transformation and themes of elegy and historical reckoning, the works on view include de Waal's sculptural installations featuring porcelain and other materials, and Mann's tintypes and platinum prints.De Waal's sculptures consist of porcelain vessels juxtaposed with porcelain tiles, platinum, silver, and blocks of Cor-Ten steel. He groups these compositions in minimalistic wall-mounted vitrines, emphasizing their status as crafted and collected objects. Some works in a black palette that are housed in freestanding vitrines have titles that allude to poems by Seamus Heaney and Osip Mandelstam. Another body of wall-mounted works in a palette of white and silver is titled after Dickinson's letters.Mann's platinum prints capture fragments of tombstones that she found at stonemasons near her Virginia home. The subtle tonalities of matte gray that result from her distinctive use of the platinum print process emphasize the stones' faceted surfaces, revealing their elemental forms. Her tintypes picture still-life arrangements of wooden and metal tools and other objects, emphasizing their shapes and worn textures. To make them, Mann employs a nineteenth-century photographic technique that involves flowing photosensitive collodion onto a metal plate and using a large-format view camera to produce unique, direct-positive images that are both luminous and mysteriously shadowed.Cy Twombly was responsible for introducing the two artists when he gave Mann a copy of de Waal's family memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes in 2010. Discovering their shared affinities, Mann and de Waal later discussed her photographs of Twombly's studio in a conversation that was published in her book Remembered Light: Cy Twombly in Lexington (2016). Their exchange of ideas continues through the works in to light, and then return—, and in the dialogue published in the exhibition's fully illustrated catalogue.to light, and then return— is complemented by this must be the place, an exhibition of new works by de Waal at 541 West 24th Street, New York, from September 13 through October 28, 2023.Edmund de Waal was born in 1964 in Nottingham, England, and lives and works in London. Public collections include the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, University of Oxford, England; Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, England; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Germany; Jewish Museum, Berlin; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Exhibitions include On White: Porcelain Stories from the Fitzwilliam, Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge, England (2013–14); white: a project by Edmund de Waal, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2015–16); During the Night, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2016–17); white island, Museu d'Art Contemporani d'Eivissa, Ibiza, Spain (2018); –one way or other–, Schindler House, Los Angeles (2018–19); elective affinities, Frick Collection, New York (2019); psalm, Museo Ebraico and Ateneo Veneto, Venice (2019); Lettres à Camondo, Musée Nissim de Camondo, Paris (2021–22); and The Hare with Amber Eyes, Jewish Museum, New York (2021–22).De Waal is also renowned for his family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes (2010), which won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Costa Biography Award, among others, and has been translated into over thirty languages. Other titles include Bernard Leach (1997), The White Road (2015), and Letters to Camondo (2021). In 2015, de Waal was awarded the Windham-Campbell Prize for Nonfiction by Yale University. In 2021 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for Services to the Arts. De Waal will receive the Isamu Noguchi Award on September 12, 2023, together with Theaster Gates and Hanya Yanagihara.Sally Mann was born in 1951 in Lexington, Virginia, where she lives and works. Collections include High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. The major survey exhibition A Thousand Crossings was held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in 2018, and traveled to the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA (2018); J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2018–19); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2019); Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris (2019); and High Museum of Art, Atlanta (2020).Mann's many books include At Twelve (1988), Immediate Family (1992), Still Time (1994), What Remains (2003), Deep South (2005), Proud Flesh (2009), and Remembered Light (2016). Her bestselling memoir, Hold Still (2015), was a finalist for the National Book Awards and won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction. She has received numerous awards, including National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Guggenheim Foundation grants. In 2021, Mann was honored with the OPUS Award by the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans; was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame; and was declared the Prix Pictet laureate. In 2022, she received a Lucie Award for achievement in fine art.#deWaalMannTO LIGHT, AND THEN RETURN—
Edmund de Waal and Sally Mann
Opening reception: Thursday, September 14, 6–8pm
September 14–October 28, 2023
976 Madison Avenue, New York