Howard Sherman: Exploited Nudes Meant for Commodification

HOWARD SHERMAN EXPLOITED NUDES MEANT FOR COMMODIFICATION

September 12–October 17, 2020

HOWARD SHERMAN EXPLOITED NUDES MEANT FOR COMMODIFICATION September 12 – October 17, 2020

2143 Westheimer Houston, TX 77098 foltzgallery.com

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This catalog was published to accompany the exhibition “Howard Sherman: Exploited Nudes Meant For Commodification,” curated by Sarah Foltz Foltz Fine Art, Houston, Texas September 12–October 17, 2020 Copyright © 2020 Howard Sherman. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form without written permission of the publishers.

Published by Howard Sherman and Foltz Fine Art LLC, 2020 Catalog designed by Design Attaché, Lisa Goodrich, lisa@design-attache.com Photographed by Harrison Evans, harrican@sbcglobal.net Proofreading/Editing by Deborah S. Sherman, debsherman74@gmail.com

FO RWA R D Howard Sherman: Exploited Nudes Meant for Commodification Commencing the fall 2020 season, Foltz Fine Art is pleased to present Howard Sherman: Exploited Nudes Meant for Commodification—the artist’s first hometown gallery exhibition after a brief hiatus living in New York City over the past three years. In this solo exhibition, contemporary artist Howard Sherman’s newest body of work marks a dramatic shift in both scale and material from his previous works, while continuing to create explosive compositions that entice and challenge viewers. iv

Previous examination of his oeuvre reveals two distinct bodies of work—his monumental canvas works, bordering on wall sculpture due to their assemblage and mixed-media nature, and his more intimate works on paper where figures emerge and resurface. These intriguing works, with their equally ambiguous titles, leave room for interpretation and often evoke narratives projected from the viewer. The bigger and bolder his work is in complexity, color, and use of materials, the more Sherman is able to express ideas larger than himself, seemingly a manifestation of his physical presence

with sweeping strokes. In contrast, his smaller works display an essential, distilled or elemental quality, and often present a playful and humorous nature, revealing insight into another side of the artist. Both groups of work by Sherman are equally authentic and stylistically distinctive.

If art reveals something of the artist’s true nature, then this exhibition signifies a new phase of the artist’s work, resulting from personal growth and development that has taken place over the past few years.

With his return to Houston, Sherman seems to have left behind all constraints and limitations inherent to living in New York City. He once again has more room to play and expand as an artist, allowing for a greater sense of freedom and experimentation thus resulting in an emergence of new ideas. For the first time in years, he is working in a much wider variety of sizes, proving that his work is compelling at all scales. Sherman’s large canvas works and assemblages on paper have been an increasing part of his production. The new works seem to have a more refined color palette, as several of these works tend towards a

monochromatic scheme, interrupted by bursts of bright yellow, pink, purple, and other recognizable colors the artist has been repeatedly drawn to over the years.

In addition to the diversity found within these new assemblages, Sherman introduces a series of small paintings on canvas mounted to wood panel. These hybrid works seem to be the next stage in the evolution for the artist’s small works on paper for which he has been prolific over the years. With these small works, Sherman moves from paper to canvas, loosening his approach and incorporating more of his ideas relating to assemblage.

While some things remain constant and recognizable in Sherman’s recent work, major changes and developments have occurred, and with these new investigations, neither the artist nor his work remains static.

Sherman has always sought to disrupt the surface of his art, pushing twodimensional works into the third, and blending media past the point of definition.

In this exhibition, the artist’s emphasis on the materiality of the works is heightened by their unframed presentation within the gallery space—intended to be viewed

as raw, fresh works, straight from the artist’s studio. This sense of immediacy and access is akin to bulletin board temporality. Sherman’s incredible new work feels like a viewer’s first glance of something in a freshly conceived state.

—Sarah Foltz Foltz Fine Art, Houston, Texas September 2020

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Foltz Fine Art (formerly William Reaves | Sarah Foltz Fine Art) is a legacy gallery in Houston, Texas dedicated to elevating premier Texas artists—from Early Texas Masters and Mid-Century Pioneers to Contemporary Artists. The gallery started in 2006 as William Reaves Fine Art and has since welcomed Sarah Foltz as Gallery Director in 2013 and becoming sole owner in 2017. In her new role, Sarah continues to uphold the gallery’s strong reputation as a trusted art advisor, secondary market specialist, and champion of Historical, Modern and Contemporary Texas art. Prior to joining the gallery, Sarah completed her M.A. in Art History at Southern Methodist University where she focused her thesis research on contemporary Texas regional and Latin American art; prior to this, she received her B.A. in Photojournalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Sarah is also an accredited member of the Appraisers Association of America.

W H AT I S H OWA R D S H E R M A N A D D I N G TO T H E CO N V E RSAT I O N ?

Over a hundred years ago, non-objective art made its debut. These new images exhibited mixed emotions and many artists sourced spiritual undertones. Immanuel Kant’s theories of the unseen world also gave artists permission to create imagined worlds on canvas. Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings used basic elements of line, color, form, and shape to produce these otherworldly paintings.

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In the mid-twentieth century, Americans invented the Abstract Expressionist movement. These artists looked within their very beings, wrenching their emotions onto canvas. Before AbEx, American painting represented the external world. Now paint was material showing the human capacity to feel. In the

Spor tsmanship Is for Suckers, Howard Sherman, 2013

1980s, Neo-Expressionist began to drop the non-objective in favor of a narrative approach, while keeping in the spirit of abstracting or simplifying the image.

I urge you to look at Kandinsky’s Composition VII from 1913 and then look at Sherman’s Sportsmanship Is for Suckers made in 2013. These two artists both capture the sense of chaos and anxiety of their individual times perfectly.

Kandinsky saw the drumbeats of war, while Sherman watched the global economy go into a tailspin and witnessed the seemingly never-ending Global War on Terror. It’s no wonder these two artists created such explosive canvases. But the difference between them is that Sherman remains positive even among the chaos

Composition VII, an abstract oil painting executed in 1913 by Wassily Kandinsky, a Russian-born painter. It is in the collection of the Tretyakov Galler y, Moscow.

of the modern world. Although his work of this period might be charged with raw energy, it doesn’t come from someone brooding over each mark he makes.

Rather, the paint is applied with gestures that contradict gloom and colors that defy the doom. Sherman’s view is uplifting in the face of adversity.

AbEx artists were seen as moping around and digging deep in their souls for meaning, but you don’t get a broad range of emotions in their work. Sherman’s

work reflects complex emotional range of content with spontaneous output.

Among his work you will find moments that celebrate life—a feeling you are not likely to get from those in the 1940s. I think some might think his work is critical, if not ironically satirizing those old pros, but this would be a gross misreading of his intent. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, and Roy Liechtenstein mocked and reacted against the AbEx artists. Sherman embraces these artists’ innovations, but he doesn’t subscribe to their emotional agenda. I see works by Rauschenberg and Julian Schnabel as important influences on Sherman’s work.

Rauschenberg’s combines are key to understanding Sherman’s assemblages.

Unlike Rauschenberg, Sherman is not emotionally detached from his process.

Like Schnabel, he is bold in trying new things, but Sherman is a better editor.

When a piece doesn’t work, he reuses the material in other works.

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If there is an AbEx artist that speaks to me in a way similar to Sherman, it would be De Kooning. Sherman is clearly thinking about the figure or portraiture in much of his work. Faces of people, or even animals, seem to emerge from the canvases.

Sherman has admitted that figures are a strong source of inspiration. Many times, the paintings look at you while you look at them. However, you may not immediately see the shapes as facial features, but rather, the faces emerge from the images.

De Kooning attacked his subjects and made a mess of them. Sherman doesn’t hate or find his figures ugly like De Kooning. I find he is far more sympathetic to them, making you want to get to know these characters. Some viewers might be distressed at first, but if you wait and spend some time with them, you begin to feel that Sherman is far more playful with his figures.

That feeling of joy reflects his personality and his work.

One could say that Neo-Expressionism influenced Sherman a great deal early on, and I think that analysis wouldn’t be far off the mark. But the artist’s work has evolved further from the myth and subjectivity that the Neo-Expressionists created.

Sherman has moved away from his explicit reference to comics and pop elements to more unique images of his own that defy reference. It’s as if non-objective art has come full circle with Sherman—placing his own stamp on it and sending it off into the future for processing.

Reacting to other artists is an important motivator that spurs creativity. The Neo-Expressionists were fighting against Conceptualism and Minimalism. Similarly, while in graduate school at the University of North Texas, Sherman became all the more expressive because many of his fellow artists were so precise and understated. Even Vernon Fisher, a renowned professor that had an incredible impact on Sherman, was meticulous in his work. Granted, Sherman was already developing these nonfigurative ideas before grad school, his focus was cemented toward a kind of abstraction that pushed toward the “wild beast”—to coin a phrase from the French art critic, Louis Vauxcelles. Much like the Fauvist, Sherman uses impossibly bright colors to attack your senses. His work is a simultaneous creation and destruction.

The process is a dance between Apollo

and Dionysus. Sherman is in play with the intellectual process of solving the formal qualities of the painting while wildly attacking the surface with emotional exuberance. Both take over at times, but neither conquest over the other. His mind and actions move simultaneously, hit marks, think, then act again. A moment occurs when the painting is resolved and what is left is that intellectual and emotional synthesis.

While visiting Sherman’s studio, he handed me a book containing images of older pieces. I then got into the business of looking at his current body of work. There was a real contrast between the two and I observed some incredible growth. In the past, Sherman’s paintings showed nervous energy through his consecutive strokes of paint and the piling of collage material.

Now, his work has been cut back to a more essential use of paint and collage elements. With some works, Sherman tricks the eye through his trompe l’oeil tape. His color sophistication has evolved.

A few colors are chosen in relationship to monochrome paints. Thus, his colors are now far punchier than in his past works.

Much of Sherman’s color choices are

similar to the previous, but it’s clear the color looks brighter and hits you harder because he doesn’t overload you.

Howard Sherman is an impassioned, expressive painter with a strong sense of formal resolutions in his work. Many of his images draw from popular culture and art historical references for inspiration. The work feels like a comic splash page with explosive mark-making and self-made collage. Sherman is adding some muchneeded humor and raw energy to the history of non-objective painting. Honest and open, the work says what it is and does what it says. The artist is giving us a refreshing approach to painting. It is clear to me that Sherman has a unique voice, rooted in the past, drawing from the present, and innovating a path to the future.

—Todd Camplin Jefferson, Texas September 2020 Born in Indiana, raised in Kentucky—Todd Camplin left for grad school. He received a Master of Humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas and a Master of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting at the University of North Texas. Camplin is an art critic for ModernDallas.net since 2011. He has worked with artists and galleries writing essays for catalogs.

Camplin is an artist of fine detail drawings.

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RADICAL DOUBT; RIGOROUS OUTPUT I spent most of 2016-2019 in New York City. Taking myself out of my comfort zone in Houston, I had the opportunity to ask myself a lot of tough questions. It was a time of personal development and growth. It’s reflected in this new body of work.

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This exhibition includes paintings and works on paper that showcase shifts in both scale and material. For the first time, I’ve created small paintings on canvas that are mounted on board. I’ve also made some medium to large-scale works on paper. It’s a size that I haven’t tackled since 2012. With the other small works, I substituted canvas sheets for paper.

Everything I make feels so different now.

There seems to be a more direct line of thought between the hand and the page with a stronger sense of unconscious selfmanifestation. The compositions continue to become more distilled yet retain that well documented raw power. Everything feels less polychromatic while still vitally charged with specific color choices. Additionally, I’ve included a couple of assemblages that I did in the New York City studio before the pandemic. These pieces have been critical to my growth using materials such as canvas and paper in a more physical way. The ones

chosen for this show seem to integrate with the rest of this work and exemplify another transition.

—Howard Sherman Houston, Texas September 2020

Howard Sherman (b. 1970) Since receiving his Masters of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing from the University of North Texas in 2006, Howard Sherman has been leading a new generation of explosive contemporary painters from the Texas art world. Sherman’s typically human-scale canvases carry traces of his background in cartooning, offsetting the loud, raw power of his aggressive paint strokes with a playful sense of humor.

His smaller works on paper show an intuitive use of material in a distilled yet assertive manner. The frenetic and muscular heft of the work is balanced with a measured precision and a thoughtful integration of a number of art historical styles that can be read as portraits, punch lines, or poems.

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Sherman’s painting was chosen for the cover of the art history book Texas Abstract: Modern and Contemporary by Michael Paglia and Jim Edwards.

The artist has been profiled several times in New American Paintings and his work appears in the book Texas Artists Today. Rice University collects his personal artifacts for their research center. He has been awarded numerous residencies around the country and has been a visiting artist abroad. Sherman has been in a number of solo exhibitions across the United States, and his work has been featured in group exhibitions around the world. His work is in several museum collections and is on permanent display at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, Texas.

The artist lives and works in New York City and Houston.

E xp loited Nu d es M ea nt for Com m od if ication ACRYLIC AND MARKER ON CANVAS | 70 X 60 X 2 IN | 2020

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G uns on the Table, C as h i n t h e Drawe r

I n T his Room We Ca n’ t Tou ch the Floor

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List of An c i e n t Po et s

T he Clou d Eva p orated a nd T hen You Were G one

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Sc reamin g at the Make Be l i eve

S ha r ing the I ntim acies of M y M ind

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Sleeping on a B e d of F l owe rs

Nig ht T im e Pa sseng er

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E D U CAT I O N 2006 University of North Texas-M.F.A.Painting and Drawing 1993 Univeristy of Texas at Austin-B.A.Studio Art S E L EC T E D E X H I B I T I O N S 2020 Foltz Fine Art, “Exploited Nudes Meant For Commodification”; Houston, TX Roaster’s Gallery, Chinati open house weekend; Marfa, TX (pending) 2019 ARC House; Houston TX Erin Cluley Gallery; “Summer 2019” Dallas, TX Blue Orange Contemporary, “Howard Sherman and Marcelyn McNeil”; Houston, TX 2018 Roaster’s Gallery, “Whirling in it’s own Feedback Loop” Chinati open house weekend; Marfa, TX PRVT VW Gallery; “Knee Deep”; New York, NY Field Projects Gallery; “Comfort Level”; curated by Alissa Polan; New York, NY Union Gallery; “Collect It For The Culture”; curated by Robert Leroy Hodge; Houston, TX Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts; “44 Artists From Texas”; curated by Linda Cullum; Lubbock, TX 2017 Rudolph Blume/Artscan Gallery; “Ludwig Schwarz/Howard Sherman”; Houston, TX MECA Art Fair; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Alaina Simone Projects Mill Contemporary; “Lucky Strike”; Santa Fe, NM Cultural Center Rocky Neck Art Colony, “Instigators” solo exhibition; Gloucester, MA Flight Gallery, “Referendum” curated by Tommy Gregory; San Antonio, TX Circuit12 Contemporary; “Shifting Fancy Of The Crowd” solo exhibition; Dallas, TX 2016 Rudolph Blume/Artscan Gallery: “Dialogue” curated and catalog essay by Howard Sherman; Houston, TX Art Busan; Busan, South Korea with Blue Orange Contemporary 2015 Roaster Gallery, “Feeding off the land like an animal” solo exhibition; Chinati open house weekend; Marfa, TX Angelo State University,”Shambolic Power”; solo exhibition for Henry Edwards Distinguished Lectureship in Art; San Angelo, TX Blue Orange Contemporary, “Lurching and Cursing in a Field of Tulips” solo exhibition and “Texas Abstract:Modern+Contemporary” book signing; Houston, TX * “Sportsmanship Is For Suckers” painting chosen for book cover Rudolph Blume/Artscan Gallery; “Texas abstract:modern-contemporary”; group exhibition; Houston, TX Rudolph Blume/ Artscan Gallery; “Eating Paint”; group exhibition ; Houston, TX Rudolph Blume/Artscan Gallery; “Eating Paint”; group exhibition ; Houston, TX

2014 “Texas Abstract: Modern+ Contemporary” by Michael Paglia and Jim Edwards (Fresco Books) book signing and exhibition, Wade Wilson Gallery; Santa Fe, NM * “Sportsmanship Is For Suckers” painting chosen for book cover Art Museum of South Texas,”40 for 40: Recent Gifts to the Permanent Collection”; Corpus Christi, TX University of North Texas Artspace Dallas; distinguished alumni exhibition; Dallas, TX 2013 McMurtrey Gallery,”Metaphysical Batman”; solo exhibition; Houston, TX Williams Tower Gallery; “Collage, More and Less: Redux”; group exhibition; Houston, TX Houston Arts Alliance, Howard Sherman:Artist picks; exhibition curated by Howard Sherman; group exhibition; Houston, TX McMurtrey Gallery Microspace; “Selfreplicating as Godzilla”; solo exhibition; Houston, TX 2012 Cris Worley Fine Arts; “List of demands”; solo exhibition; Dallas, TX McClain Gallery, “In Plain Sight”; group exhibition; Houston, TX (catalogue) Houston Arts Alliance; “Layover: Houston Airport System Portable Artwork Collection Preview”; group exhibition; Houston, TX Flanders Gallery, “Another impatient sucker”; solo exhibition; Raleigh, North Carolina Cris Worley Fine Arts; “Studio Visit 1-1” group exhibition; Dallas, TX 2011 Cris Worley Fine Arts (with Fedri Fine Art Advisory); “Melodrama over craft, craft over melodrama” solo exhibition; Dallas, TX Muse Gallery; “Houston to Hyderabad” group exhibition; Hyderabad, India Annual Paint Snob Exhibition; Arkansas State University; group exhibition; Jonesboro, Arkansas Assistance League of Houston: Celebrates Texas Art 2011; Williams Tower Gallery; group exhibition; Houston, TX; Curated by Heather Pasanti, Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY 2010 Galveston Arts Center; “Eating your friction” solo museum exhibition traveling from Art Museum of Southeast Texas Artspace; “Bogus rating system” solo exhibition; Raleigh, North Carolina Museo de Arte Moderno; group exhibition; Trujillo, Peru Pan American Art Projects; “Abstractions” group exhibition; Miami, Florida G Gallery; “New American Paintings #90 winners”; group exhibition; Houston, TX 2009 McMurtrey Gallery; “When gorillas shoot pigs” solo exhibition; Houston, TX Pan American Art Projects; “Bloodthirsty animal on two legs” solo exhibition; Dallas, TX 2008 Art Museum of Southeast Texas; “Eating your friction” solo exhibition;

Beaumont, TX *included full color catalogue Gerald Peters Gallery; “Group dialogue” group exhibition; Santa Fe, New Mexico McMurtrey Gallery; “In my mind, you’re inflatable” solo exhibition; Houston, TX Artist-in-residence group exhibition; McColl Center for Visual Art; Charlotte, NC American University; “Multiplicitocracy” group exhibition; Washington, D.C. 2007 Camp Marfa; Marfa, TX Gerald Peters Gallery; “Commodification of dissent” solo exhibition; Dallas, TX North Harris College artist-in-residence solo exhibition; Houston, TX 2006 McMurtrey Gallery; “Venti Americano” solo exhibition; Houston, TX REM Gallery; solo exhibition; San Antonio, TX Arthouse; “New American Talent”; two-year traveling exhibition; Austin, TX; Juror: Aimee Chang, Exhibition Coordinator and Assistant Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles Assistance League of Houston: Celebrates Texas Art 2006; Williams Tower Gallery; Houston, TX; Curated by Jeffrey Grove, Wieland Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, High Art Museum, Atlanta P E R M A N E N T CO L L EC T I O N S Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Beaumont, TX Bank of Montreal Bush Intercontinental Airport; Houston, TX Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX Lonestar College - North Harris County, TX Dow Golub Remels & Beverly, LLP, Houston, TX AWA R D S & H O N O RS 2016 Visiting artist - Hunter College; Nari Ward’s graduate drawing seminar; NYC, NY 2015 Henry Edwards Distinguished Lectureship in Art; Angelo State University; San Angelo, TX 2014 “Texas Abstract: Modern+ Contemporary” by Michael Paglia and Jim Edwards published by Fresco Books; “Sportsmanship is for suckers” painting chosen for art history book cover along with a five-page profile 2014 Artist of the Year Award at The Decorative Center Houston 2014 Artist Fellowship grant 2013 New American Paintings Volume 108; Western Edition; Juror:Veronica Roberts, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Blanton Museum; Austin, TX 2012 Virginia Center for the Creative Arts; artist-in-residence; Amherst, Virginia 2012 Wurlitzer Foundation artist-inresidence; Taos, New Mexico 2011 Menil Collection; “Artist’s Eye” lecture series—Howard Sherman discusses the work of John Chamberlain

2143 Westheimer | Houston, TX 77098 | foltzgallery.com