JAMES SIENA 2023

JAMES!SIENA

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JAMES!SIENA

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511 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

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DRAWING!IS!A!LOADED!WORD" CONVERSATIONS!WITH!JAMES!SIENA

By Laura Bannister

In 1985, six years a!er earning a bachelor of fine arts from Cornell University, James Siena moved to a dirt-floor studio on Ludlow Street in downtown Manha"an and, while painting, was making fervent, movement-driven live shorts with the East Village performance collective Watchface. (The group’s name referenced both the act of looking and the measurement of time.)

Alongside his then-partner Iris Rose, his sister Maggie Siena, and four others, Siena engaged in fast, enigmatic, and sparsely propped performances—tangles and loopings of speech and gesture—that grappled with the fragmented nature of reality and individual identity. Works like Boys Will Be Men and Negotiations (in which Siena and a second performer negotiated gender binaries and relational conventions) somehow rhyme with the work he’s making in 2023, which centers on time, process, repetition, and enlargement, all in a tightly contained space.

Siena’s latest exhibition, at Miles McEnery’s 515 West 22nd Street outpost, is composed almost entirely of intuitive drawings made in 2022–23, continuing his shi!, in the last five years, toward larger surfaces and a diverse set of morphologies. “Drawing,” he says, “is a loaded word.” He subscribes to the curatorial definition: a drawing is any work made on paper. Alongside graphite, colored pencil, and Conté crayon, Siena’s drawings at Miles McEnery deploy an arsenal of liquids—india ink, gouache, watercolor, acrylic—that thicken and dilute within small banks of color, reinforcing the presence of his hand amid a labyrinth of lines.

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James Siena member, second version, 2009 Ink on paper 8 x 6 1⁄4 inches 20.3 x 15.9 cm

He is increasingly particular about the paper he works with. A few years ago, Siena made his drawings on “very ordinary” sheets: thin Moleskine pages, the best office paper he could afford (100 percent co"on or acid free). Later, he’d draw genitalia—open legs, curving dicks, and outsized testicles—on Nile Blue sheets from Smythson, a British stationery brand. Now, as his networks of lines evolve further, he gravitates toward hard-to-find stocks—discontinued papers from the 1980s and back, stretching to the 1880s. A friend of Siena’s, the artist and paper fanatic Chuck Webster, sources rare sheets from prominent mills that are no longer in business. When Webster strikes gold, he contacts Siena, who’ll o!en buy a selection. He recently bought 100 plus sheets going back to the 19th century. “I just finished up a drawing on paper that was made in 1914,” Siena tells me. “The paper is remarkable.”

The show’s biggest works are on vintage handmade papers, sourced mostly from an English mill that has now closed. Some pieces, like the prismatic Langone I and Langone II (2023)—two watercolor and graphite studies for an unrealized mural in glass—have straight, clean edges, underscoring their bounded compositions. Others feature borders that are torn and uneven, their thinnest edges curling upward, underneath the frame. Take Stractometer (2019), an unbounded, map-like composition whose graphite edges zigzag like jagged coastlines. Siena’s markings and the paper appear to be in dialogue here: the creamy, parchment-like page, whose deckled edge echoes the freedom of his line.

Stractometer is as good a place as any to witness how opposing forces—of structure and chance, of freedom and enclosure—coexist within Siena’s ruptured, morphing plane. Here, he begins with a complex perimeter, then a spacing procedure, creating a grid. He activates this grid with recursive motions, extended gestures in faint pencil. These pencil lines are methodical, but not entirely preplanned. Each line moves in a similar—not identical—manner, over and over, across the page, wryly imitating itself. Siena insists that his accretive lines do not create a pa"ern; they follow a procedure. “Pa"erns imply a kind of repetition and uniformity,” he explains, “and what I’m interested in is the difference between things. If executed properly, the steps by which I carry out the procedure result in an unexpected outcome. An emergence.”

Like every Siena composition—exuberant, raucous, agitated Magic Eye spreads—Stractometer demands up-close inspection and rewards extended viewing. Those first, unbreaking pencil movements are bordered on either side with black Conté crayon. (He refers to this as an “articulation.”) The borders serve to emphasize the initial line, but also to overwhelm it, boxing it in like a highway paved around a spontaneous path made on foot. Through the interlocking pencil grids—which bunch and expand over his page like an ad-hoc accordion—the crayon border generates dozens of entirely new zones, small areas that Siena scribbles in roughly, leaving gaps

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of paper visible. Compacted universes are born from that first linear cue, spontaneously commanded into existence. Zoom out, and each work is like a map, in that it simulates a landscape from above. As Geoffrey Young wrote (of very different works) in James Siena: 2008 Exhibition Catalogue:

And if edge is shape, figure ground, ma"er atmosphere?

Procedures nest 8

in heartless logic.

Contour shaves necessity.

His widths declare existence seamless and factual.

For over two decades, alongside his art practice, Siena has taught at the School of Visual Arts master of fine arts program in New York. “I love to talk with my students about how an artwork should have a way in,” he says. “It doesn’t always have to have a way out. Sometimes you’re [immediately] in, and that’s it. But sometimes, it’s physical. You need to look at the corners of a work, an area where it’s more open in the bo"om. It’s an entry point.”

le": James Siena Studio, Brooklyn, NY right: 1234567890 (ascending le! to right, ascending and descending from top to bo"om), 2013 Ink on paper 11 x 8 1⁄2 inches 27.9 x 21.6 cm

Metasternum (2022), a frenetic, twitching snake print of a drawing, proffers multiple entry points.

Inky, indented trapezoids beckon the viewer like smartphone screens—blank, calming voids to dive inside of. They bunch and un-bunch in vertical rows, swelling in size at the paper’s top and bo"om perimeters, growing closer and more compacted at the horizontal center—where the work’s generative line is. Punctuated with angular banks of fluctuating copper—which have been rendered in colored pencil—the stacked, blackened units evoke ladder rungs, staircases, and escalators. At once solid and empty, flat and three dimensional, they allow the viewer’s eye to plunge inward and navigate across.

In Tendinae (2022) and Tisnian (2021–22), the generative line is vertical and provides one entry point; it’s a magnet where forms cluster, then radiate outward. Long, winding lines move within a grid whose parameters expand and contract like irregular breaths. In the Tendinae grid, swathes of cream and gold present as a jumble of abstractions that morph into one another: A bridge

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becomes a jelly bean becomes a duck turned on its side. At their jewel-colored centers, each shape’s border is echoed with bright, blunted slivers of topaz and emerald. Using only colored pencil here allows Siena to alternate between sharp outlines and hazy interiors, enacting a fevered, mystical thrumming upon the flat page. (“Psychedelic,” he says, “means so much more than we think it does. It literally means mind-manifesting.”) The intricate, scintillated, sinuous line work of Heptesserast (2020), reinforced on linen in acrylic and watercolor pencil; it is a direct dial to the divine. I’m reminded of James Elkins writing in The Object Stares Back: “Seeing is metamorphosis, not mechanism.”

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A month or so a!er we first spoke on Zoom, I met with Siena in person at his Brooklyn studio. To the right of its entrance are tall metal shelves crammed with great, hulking slabs of silver and black: early typewriters produced by Royal, Underwood, Remington, and Oliver. (Siena, perhaps unsurprisingly, has a longtime fascination with machines requiring human interaction; he has collected over 100 typewriters, and in 2014, he exhibited a series of typewriter drawings in New York. In those works, repeated palindromes, anagrams, and numeric sequences pulse across pages in colored ink—like scores or sound waves—generating visual and aural rhythms.) To the le! of the entrance, Siena had pegged documents to a slab of wood with string like a trompe l’oeil le"er board. There were art postcards, personal photographs, an annotated dollar bill, and a crumpled, all-caps slogan that read FOCUS ON LABOR. At a table, Siena poured two cups of tea from a thermos. We ate stone fruit and made a pile with the pits. Brian Eno’s Quartz played over speakers, and while it did, a large, framed work of Siena’s, hanging by the window, became a seismograph of a far-off planet, transmi"ed through his hand. Sound is always present while Siena works. (He produces his painstaking, laborintensive abstractions without assistants and works on a few simultaneously.) Recently, he returned to Hot Fives & Sevens, a 2000 box set collection of Louis Armstrong recordings made between 1925 and 1930. When working from the Paris atelier of the American printer Michael

Woolworth—which Siena has been doing this year alongside his wife, the artist Katia Santibañez— he listens to whatever randomized artist emerges via Woolworth’s iPod touch: Sarah Vaughan, Dmitri Shostakovich, Jimi Hendrix. He draws while listening to audiobooks and podcasts, too: an audiobook about the Sullivan Institute, the Upper West Side psychotherapy commune turned cult; Pod Save America; and Andrew Hickey’s sprawling podcast A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. “The programs are ge"ing more and more byzantine,” Siena says of the la"er. “They started at 30 minutes. One of the latest was four and a half hours … When you don’t work with words—which I don’t do generally—your work can be soundtracked with them.”

Language is not physically present on Siena’s page, but his artwork titles engage in playful distortion—through use of an anagram generator—directing and deflecting meaning as he chops and screws with input words. The generator, which works in multiple languages, also finds words within words. Working on a piece he’d mentally dubbed Concentration City (a!er the J.G. Ballard short story), Siena decided he didn’t like the idea of “city” as a modifier, as it suggested concentration in excess. The generator spat out its new title, Antonicity, a reference to sound or the lack of it. “For me, titles are o!en markers, distinguishing one work from another and expanding their meaning,” he says.

In Sessilae (2023), a sibilant name echoes meandering linework—there are ribbons of bronze fluttering across a pitch-black background. While Ruckle (2023) evokes a kind of surface sensuality—its chocolate-cherry pale"e illuminated with white flashes, like sun blinking on a hot car hood, or rumpled silk—the uckle sound of its name offsets this, recalling a slapstick hiccup, or Goofy’s laugh. As with Siena’s ever-shi!ing line—and his practice at large—names do not prescribe meaning but generate perception-shi!ing openings, nudging the audience somewhere only they can see, toward instability and expansion.

Laura Bannister is a writer and editor based in Manha"an. She is the editor of Museum Books.

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Atonicity, 2023

Charcoal on paper 22 1⁄2 x 31 inches 57.2 x 78.7 cm

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Concatenation, 2023

Ink and graphite on paper 11 x 8 1⁄4 inches 27.9 x 21 cm

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Decryptames, 2023

Ink and graphite on paper 22 3⁄4 x 31 inches 57.8 x 78.7 cm

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Ensciages, 2023

Watercolor and gouache on paper 25 x 19 3⁄4 inches 63.5 x 50.2 cm

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Herisson, 2023

Ink and graphite on paper 8 x 6 1⁄4 inches 20.3 x 15.9 cm

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Langone I, 2023

Watercolor and graphite on museum board 13 1⁄4 x 9 inches 33.7 x 22.9 cm

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Langone II, 2023

Watercolor and graphite on museum board 13 1⁄4 x 9 inches 33.7 x 22.9 cm

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Ruckle, 2023

Watercolor and gouache on paper 25 x 19 3⁄4 inches 63.5 x 50.2 cm

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Sessilae, 2023

Ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper 31 x 23 inches 78.7 x 58.4 cm

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Spoolstrata, 2023 Graphite on paper 22 3⁄8 x 31 1⁄16 inches 56.8 x 78.9 cm

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Strumurmur, 2023

Ink, gouache, and graphite on paper 11 1⁄4 x 8 7⁄8 inches 28.6 x 22.5 cm

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Anacellia, 2022

Ink and graphite on paper 11 x 8 1⁄2 inches 27.9 x 21.6 cm

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Cytomembrane, 2022

Ink, gouache and graphite on paper 10 3⁄4 x 8 1⁄4 inches 27.3 x 21 cm

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Dyscopioid, 2022

Ink and graphite on paper 11 x 8 1⁄2 inches 27.9 x 21.6 cm

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Metasternum, 2022

Ink, graphite, and colored pencil on paper 31 x 22 1⁄2 inches 78.7 x 57.2 cm

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Tendinae, 2022

Colored pencil on paper 9 1⁄2 x 7 inches 24.1 x 17.8 cm

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Tisnian, 2021-2022

India ink on handmade paper 29 3⁄4 x 22 5⁄8 inches 75.6 x 57.5 cm

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Ply, 2021

Ink and graphite on paper 8 1⁄2 x 11 inches 21.6 x 27.9 cm

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Dentinoid Tenons, 2020

Watercolor and graphite on paper 20 x 25 inches 50.8 x 63.5 cm

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Enderloctant, 2020

Watercolor and graphite on paper 13 1⁄2 x 17 inches 34.3 x 43.2 cm

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Heptesserast, 2020

Acrylic and watercolor pencil on linen 75 x 59 1⁄8 inches 190.5 x 150.2 cm

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Transistiorn, 2020

Watercolor and graphite on paper 25 1⁄8 x 20 inches 63.8 x 50.8 cm

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!"SS, #J$%S, 2019

Ink and graphite on paper 11 x 8 1⁄2 inches 27.9 x 21.6 cm

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417714, 2019

Graphite and crayon on paper 31 x 22 3⁄4 inches 78.7 x 57.8 cm

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Cascade, 2019

Colored pencil on paper 11 x 8 1⁄2 inches 27.9 x 21.6 cm

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RI77R77HU, 2019

Ink and graphite on paper 11 x 8 1⁄2 inches 27.9 x 21.6 cm

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SSISTHSTH, 2019

Graphite and crayon on paper 31 1⁄4 x 22 7⁄8 inches 79.4 x 58.1 cm

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Stractometer, 2019

Conte crayon and graphite on paper 29 3⁄4 x 22 inches 75.6 x 55.9 cm

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TLIL4TH7, 2019

Graphite and charcoal on paper 31 x 22 3⁄4 inches 78.7 x 57.8 cm

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URE77RRU, 2019

Ink and graphite on paper 11 x 8 1⁄2 inches 27.9 x 21.6 cm

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WNHLLHW, 2019

Graphite and charcoal on paper 31 x 22 3⁄4 inches 78.7 x 57.8 cm

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JAMES SIENA Born in 1957 in Oceanside, CA Lives and works in New York, NY and Otis, MA EDUCATION 1979 BFA, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2023 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “Work on Paper, 1999 - 2022,” Bookstein Projects, New York, NY 2022 Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY 2021 “Vergence,” Baronian, Brussels, Belgium 2020 “Phased Resonators & Reciprocating Transitions: Paintings and Watercolors,” Ratio 3, San Francisco, CA 2019 “Cascade Effect,” Galerie Xippas, Paris, France “Resonance Under Pressure,” The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA “Project Room: James Siena,” Pace Prints, New York, NY Pace Gallery, New York, NY 2017 Pace Gallery, New York, NY 2016 “Pockets of Wheat,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 2015 Xippas Art Contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland “New Sculpture,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY

“Typewriter Drawings,” Hiram Butler Gallery, Houston, TX “Labyrinthian Structures,” Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 2014 “Sequence, Direction, Package, Connection,” Dieu Donné, New York, NY Galerie Xippas, Paris, France 2011 Pace Gallery, New York, NY 2010 Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA Pace Prints, New York, NY “From the Studio,” Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 2009 “Works by Master Artist James Siena,” Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL 2008 PaceWildenstein, New York, NY 2007 “BIG FAST INK: Drawings, 1996-2007” (curated by Geoffrey Young) University Art Museum, University of Albany, Albany, NY “Prints and States,” Pace Prints, New York, NY “As Heads is Tails,” Mario Diacono Gallery, Boston, MA “Recent Editions,” Greg Kucera Gallery, Sea"le, WA 2005 “New Paintings and Gouaches,” PaceWildenstein, New York, NY “Ten Years of Printmaking,” William Shearburn Gallery, St. Louis, MO 2004 “Selected Paintings and Drawings 1990-2004,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “James Siena: Drawing and Painting,” Walter & McBean Galleries, San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA; traveled to the University of Akron, Akron, OH

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2002 “Recent Paintings,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2001 “James Siena: 1991-2001,” Gorney Bravin + Lee, New York, NY 2000 “Project Room,” Gorney Bravin + Lee, New York, NY Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 1998 Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco, CA 1997 Cristinerose Gallery, New York, NY 1996 Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn, NY

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1986 J. Noble" Gallery, Sonoma, CA

“SAME SHEETS, SAME BED: James Siena & Katia Santibañez,” Cheymore Gallery, Tuxedo Park, NY “Among Friends: Three Views of a Collection,” The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY “Two to Tango,” Bernay Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA 2019 “Daedalus’ Choice,” Galerie Xippas, Paris, France “New Typographies: Typewriter Art as Print,” The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA 2018 “The Annual Professional Painters’ Exhibition,” Century Association, New York, NY “The Heckscher Collects: Recent Acquisitions,” The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY “The New Members Exhibition,” Century Association, New York, NY “Out of Control,” Venus Over Manha"an, New York, NY “Principia Mathematica,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “The Projective Drawing,” Austrian Cultural Forum, New York, NY “Island Press: Recent Prints,” Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington University, St. Louis, MO

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2023 “I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,” Fleiss-Vallois, Hotel Chelsea, New York, NY “Retinal Hysteria” (curated by Robert Storr), Venus Over Manha"an, New York, NY “Raha Raissnia & James Siena,” Galerie Xippas, Paris, France “James Siena & Katia Santibañez: Two Plus Two Equals Three,” Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY “Mosaics” (curated by Deborah Goodman Davis), James Barron Art, Kent, CT “The Searchers,” The Philadelphia Art Alliance at University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA “Come A Li"le Closer,” DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY 2022 “Why I Make Art” (curated by Brian Alfred), Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

2017 “Dialéctica,” Galerie Xippas, Paris, France “The State of New York Painting: Works of Intimate Scale by Colorists,” Kingsborough Art Museum, Brooklyn, NY “In the Absence of Color: Artists Working in Black and White,” Hollis Taggart Galleries, New York, NY “Why Draw? 500 Years of Drawings and Watercolors,” Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME “Almost Nothing,” James Barron Art, Kent, CT 2016 “Random X,” Galerie Xippas, Punta del Este, Uruguay “Abstracción,” Galerie Xippas, Montevideo, Uruguay “Going Home,” Bortolami Gallery, New York, NY “Big Art / Small Scale,” Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO “Talking on Paper,” Pace Gallery, Beijing, China

2015 “Systems and Corruptions,” National Exemplar Gallery, New York, NY “Intimacy and Discourse: Reasonable-Sized Paintings, Part I,” Mana Contemporary, Jersey City, NJ “Linear Elements: Alain Kirili and James Siena,” OMI International Arts Center, Ghent, NY “On the Square Part II,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “Drawings and Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY “SKIN (Part 1),” National Exemplar Gallery, New York, NY “Summer Group Show,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “Black / White,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, New York, NY “Eureka,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts,” American Academy of Arts and Le"ers, New York, NY “Back to the Future Part II,” Life on Mars Gallery, New York, NY 2014 “Line: Making the Mark,” Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX “Space Out: Migration to the Interior,” Red Bull Studios, New York, NY “Orly Genger and James Siena: Works on Paper,” Sargent’s Daughters, New York, NY “Pierogi xx: Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition,” Pierogi, New York, NY “In the Round,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “Oblique Strategies: Track 2,” Peter Fingesten Gallery, Pace University, New York, NY “The Age of Small Things,” Dodge Gallery, New York, NY 2013 “Heat Chaos Resistance: It’s Time to Live in the Sca"ered Sun,” Radiator Gallery, New York, NY “Come Together: Surviving Sandy Year 1,” Industry City, Brooklyn, NY “System/Repetition,” Russell Bowman Art Advisory, Chicago, IL “Image and Abstraction,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “Abstract Generation: Now in Print,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY “The Annual: 2013,” National Academy of Art, New York, NY “Geometric Abstraction,” Pace Prints, New York, NY 2012 “Diamond Leaves: 86 Brilliant Artist Books from Around the World,” Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing, China

“Summer Group Show,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “Print/Out: 20 Years in Print,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY “Paper A-Z,” Sue Sco" Gallery, New York, NY “Recent Editions,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “6 Abstract Painters,” DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY “50 Years at Pace,” Pace Gallery, New York, NY “Couples,” Ferrin Gallery, Pi"sford, MA “NeoIntegrity: Comics Edition,” Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, New York, NY “The Visible Vagina,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY “On the Square,” PaceWildenstein, New York, NY 2009 “A Walk on the Beach,” PaceWildenstein, New York, NY “Pa"erns Connect: Tribal Art and Works by James Siena,” Pace Primitive, New York, NY “Morphological Mutiny,” Galerie Nolan Judin, Berlin, Germany; traveled to David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY “New at the Morgan: Acquisitions Since 2004,” The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY “Talk Dirty to Me,” Larissa Goldston Gallery, New York, NY 2008 “Chroma,” Ruth S. Harley Center Gallery, Adelphi University, Garden City, NY “Revision, Reiteration, Recombination: Process and the Contemporary Print,” College of Visual Arts, St. Paul, MN “Sensory Overload: Light, Motion, and the Optical in Art since 1945,” Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI “A"ention to Details,” The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY 2007 “All for Art! Great Private Collections Among Us,” Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Montréal, Canada “Neointegrity,” Derek Eller Gallery, New York, NY “Judith Linhares / James Siena,” University Art Museum, University of Albany, Albany, NY “Works on Paper,” Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA “Tara Donovan, Sol Lewi", Robert Mangold, James Siena: Minimalist Prints,” Augen Gallery, Portland, OR “Not For Sales,” P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY

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“Lateral A"itudes,” Raritan Valley Community College Art Gallery, Somerville, NJ 2006 “Drawing Through It: Works on Paper from the 1970s to Now,” David Nolan Gallery, New York, NY “Dieu Donné Papermill: The First 30 Years,” C.G. Boerner, New York, NY “Contemporary Masterworks: Saint Louis Collects,” Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO “The Compulsive Line: Etching 1900 to Now,” The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY

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2005 “James Siena by Chuck Close and James Siena Prints,” Pace Prints, New York, NY “Group Exhibition,” PaceWildenstein, New York, NY “237th Royal Academy of Art from Madeline & Les Stern,” Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY “New Acquisition Installation,” Johnson Gallery for Drawings and Prints, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY “Drawings from the 1960s to the Present,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Logical Conclusions: 40 Years of Rule-Based Art,” PaceWildenstein, New York, NY “two d,” Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, Ireland “Super Cool,” Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY “Sets, Series, and Suites: Contemporary Prints,” Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA 2004 “Drawing a Pulse,” Slusser Gallery, School of Art and Design, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI “Summer 2004,” PaceWildenstein, New York, NY “The 2004 Biennial,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY “Endless Love,” DC Moore Gallery, New York, NY 2003 “Black White,” Danese, New York, NY 2002 “The Fall Line,” OSP Gallery, Boston, MA

“New Editions and Monoprints,” Pace Prints, New York, NY “The 177th Annual: An Invitational Exhibition,” National Academy of Design Museum, New York, NY “New Editions,” Senior & Shopmaker Gallery, New York, NY “On Paper,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “The Tipping Point,” Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2001 “Repetition in Discourse,” The Painting Center, New York, NY “Accumulations,” School of Art Gallery, Kent State University, Kent, OH “BOXY,” Dee/Glasoe Gallery, New York, NY “By Hand: Pa"ern, Precision, and Repetition in Contemporary Drawing,” California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA 2000 “Art on Paper,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC “Mapping, Territory, Connexions,” Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France “Fluid Flow,” James Graham and Sons, New York, NY “Invitational Exhibition,” American Academy of Arts and Le"ers, New York, NY “Greater New York,” P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY 1999 “Cyber Cypher Either End,” Mario Diacono Gallery, Boston, MA “Invitational Exhibition,” American Academy of Arts and Le"ers, New York, NY “Pa"ern,” Graham Gallery, New York, NY “Trippy World,” Baron/Boisante Editions, New York, NY “New Work: Painting Today, Recent Acquisitions,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA “One by Four,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Ultra Buzz,” Johnson County Community College, Overland Park, KS “Rage for Art (Pierogi Reborn),” Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn, NY “Free Coke,” Greene Na!ali Gallery, New York, NY “post-hypnotic,” Illinois State University, Normal, IL; traveled to McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH; Atlanta College of Art Gallery, Atlanta, GA; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; and the Tweed Museum of Art, University of Minnesota, Duluth, MN

1998 “The Risk of Existence,” Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York, NY “Wallpaper,” Nicholas Davies Gallery, New York, NY “Exploring Interior Landscape: Art from the Collection of Clifford Diver,” Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE 1997 “All the Things You Are,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “Tracery,” Betsy Senior Gallery, New York, NY “Current Undercurrent,” Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York, NY 1996 “96 Works on Paper,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA 1995 “Group Exhibition,” S. Cono Pizzeria, Brooklyn, NY “Obsession,” Chassie Post Gallery, New York, NY “Selections,” Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York, NY “Wheel of Fortune,” Lombard-Freid Fine Arts, New York, NY “Other Rooms,” Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York, NY

1990 “A Question of Paint,” Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo, NY 1989 “The Art of the Computer and Xerox Machine,” Minor Injury Gallery, Brooklyn, NY “Drawings,” Wolff Gallery, New York, NY 1988 “Almost White,” Gabrielle Bryers Gallery, New York, NY “James Siena / Cary Smith,” Wolff Gallery, New York, NY 1987 “Atelier Conversations,” John Good Gallery, New York, NY “Dan Schmidt / James Siena,” J. Noble" Gallery, Sonoma, CA “George Korsmit / Willy Heeks / James Siena,” Jeffrey Neale Gallery, New York, NY “Group Exhibition,” Wolff Gallery, New York, NY 1986 “By Other Means,” Just Above Midtown/Downtown, New York, NY

1994 “The Beauty Show,” Four Walls, Brooklyn, NY “Group Exhibition,” Lipton Owens Company, New York, NY “Jobs Overseas,” Kunstverein München, Munich, Germany “Sworn Statements,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA

AWARDS

1993 “Group Grope,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA “The Return of the Cadavre Exquis,” The Drawing Center, New York, NY; traveled to Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA; Forum for Contemporary Art, St. Louis, MO; and The American Center, Paris, France

2015 Residency, Fundación Casa Wabi, Oaxaca, Mexico

1992 “Vibology,” White Columns, New York, NY 1991 “The Painting Project,” Four Walls, Brooklyn, NY

2021 Guggenheim Fellowship in the Fine Arts, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY

2013 Resident Fellow, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy 2011 Elected to the National Academy of Design, New York, NY 2004 Elected to Membership, Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY Residency, Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY 2000 Louis Comfort Tiffany Award, New York, NY

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Arts and Le"ers Award in Painting, American Academy of Arts and Le"ers, New York, NY

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY

1998 Purchase Award, American Academy of Arts and Le"ers, New York, NY

Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI

1995 Grant, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY

Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Boston, MA

Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN

The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX 1979 Charles Goodwin Sands Medal, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 1977 Edward Durell Stone Award, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY

The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL

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SELECT COLLECTIONS

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA

Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME

Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE

Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, ME

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, State Fair Community College, Sedalia, MO

Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, IA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA The Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Washington University, St. Louis, MO McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX

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Published on the occasion of the exhibition

JAMES!SIENA 14 December 2023 – 3 February 2024 Miles McEnery Gallery 515 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2023 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved Essay © 2023 Laura Bannister Publications and Archival Associate Julia Schlank, New York, NY Photography by Dan Bradica, New York, NY Christopher Burke Studios, New York, NY Catalogue layout by Spevack Loeb, New York, NY ISBN: 979-8-3507-2438-7 Cover: Decryptames, (detail), 2023

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