Andrew Edlin Gallery is excited to announce its participation in Independent Projects, a new offshoot of Independent, the annual New York based contemporary art fair that takes place in March. The Fair will take place at Center 548, the former home of the Dia Art Foundation, in Manhattan’s Chelsea gallery district.
This new event will feature 25 galleries and breaks with the established art fair model - after its initial, long-weekend run as an art fair (Thursday-Sunday, November 6-9), the fair will become an open-to-the-public, multi-part exhibition, which will remain on view through November 15. Each of the 25 dealers will present a solo artist exhibition.
At Independent Projects, Andrew Edlin Gallery will show the works of Thornton Dial - the Alabama-born, self-taught artist, who is recognized as an American master of wall-mounted, wildly inventive assemblages, paintings and free-standing sculptures.
Born in rural Alabama in 1928, Thornton Dial is a former bricklayer, carpenter and welder, who once worked in a Pullman railway-car factory. Still active today, he has spent his life in and around Bessemer, Alabama. Over the years, Dial has used everything from animal hides, stuffed animals, mattress springs and barbed wire to spray paint, plastic baby dolls, bones and carpet scraps to produce his mixed-media paintings and assemblages.
Rooted in the American South’s tradition of yard art, Dial’s work has taken on some big themes, including slavery, war, injustice and the abuse of women. It has been featured in many noteworthy exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (2000), two monographic surveys of his art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 2005-2006, and the traveling “Hard Truths,” in 2011-13, hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. An earlier, two-venue show took place simultaneously at the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the American Folk Art Museum in New York in 1993.
At Independent Projects, Andrew Edlin Gallery will feature 4 works by Dial, including “The Art of Alabama” (2004), “Blood of Hard Times” (2004), “Clouds Moving in the Sky, We Wake Up in Darkness and Look for Daylight” (2006) and “Everyday Life” (2013).