STEPHEN KALTENBACH
“What Death Does”
21 February–31 March, 2019
Opening Reception: Thursday, 21 February. 6-8pm
Press Release
PIEROGI is proud to introduce Conceptual artist, Stephen Kaltenbach, with two concurrent solo exhibitions: “What Death Does” at the Boiler in Brooklyn and “You Are Me.” at Pierogi in Manhattan, both curated by David E. Stone. The opening reception for “What Death Does” will be held at The Boiler on Thursday, February 21st from 6-8 pm with the artist in attendance.
Stephen Kaltenbach is a pioneer of American Conceptual art, first active in New York during the 1960s and from 1970 to the present in Northern California creating works as one of his personas, Regional Artist. While most of Kaltenbach’s work is optimistic and occasionally humorous, there is another more somber side to some of his work. One could think of his “Time Capsules” as being tombs. Many of his works refer directly to death and morbidity like his “Bury with the Artist” time capsule or his “Coffin Cam drawing.”
The “What Death Does” exhibition will feature the premier installation of a three dimensional realization of Kaltenbach’s drawing of the same name. This includes a full-scale modern living room with no ceiling or roof, allowing rain to flow freely into the room and its furnishings, ultimately destroying its contents. Supplementing this work will be the original drawing, prints, time capsules, and other works that focus on the eventuality of death—all in the tomb-like environment of the Boiler exhibition space.
In writing about Kaltenbach’s Time Capsules, Daniel Byers (Curatorial Fellow at the Walker Art Center) wrote in the catalog for The Quick and The Dead, “Time Capsules, and their attendant acts of burial and excavation, also force a reckoning with death, confounding aging and decay with their timelessness and material preservation.”
Stephen Kaltenbach has exhibited nationally and internationally including several definitive exhibitions of conceptual/minimal art including: “Live In Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form” (Harald Szeemann) Kunsthalle, Berne, Switzerland; “Information” (Kynaston L. McShine) Museum of Modem Art, New York, NY; “Earthworks” Dwan Gallery, New York, NY; “9 at Leo Castelli” (Robert Morris); “KONZEPTION–CONCEPTION” Stadtisches Museum, Leverkusen (Konrad Fischer/Rolf Wedewer); “Between Man and Matter: Tokyo Biennale” (Yusuka Nakahara) Tokyo; “955,000: Vancouver Show” Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (Lucy Lippard); “1965-1975: Reconsidering the Object of Art” (Ann Goldstein/Anne Rorimer) Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; “The Quick and The Dead” (Peter Eleey) Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; “1969” PS1, New York, NY; “Under the Big Black Sun” (Paul Schimmel) MOCA, Los Angeles, CA; “State of Mind” (Constance Lewallan/Karen Moss) Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA and Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA; “ENDS OF THE EARTH: Land Art to 1974” (Philipp Kaiser/Miwon Kwon) MOCA, Los Angeles; “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013” (Germano Celant) Foundazione Prada, Venice, Italy; “Materializing ‘Six Years’” Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art” (Catherine Morris/Vincent Bonin) Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; and many others.
Stephen Kaltenbach has had solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA, Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA, Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland, and numerous galleries in the United States and Europe.
Kaltenbach’s work is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, Kroeller-Mueller Museum, Otterlo, The Netherlands, Muzeum Sztuki, Lodz, Poland, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden, Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA, Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Evanston Museum of Art, IL, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, as well as multiple private collections.