Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin

Combining both figurative and abstract traditions and deploying a diverse range of materials, Petah Coyne’s sculptures constitute a complex language. This comprehensive nineteen-year survey was organized by Albright-Knox Art Gallery Senior Curator Douglas Dreishpoon and will include a selection of Coyne’s organic concretions from the late eighties; metallic black sand works from the early nineties; wax chandeliers and intricate hair weavings from the same decade; more recent, figure-based wax personages; and a suite of eight large-format photographs from the years 1992 to 2001.

Coyne’s work first came to public attention in the fall of 1987, with a full-scale, organic environment installed at the Sculpture Center in New York. The installation remained at the Sculpture Center for less than four weeks. During that short time, it garnered impressive critical mass, as more and more people heard about it and made their way uptown to see it in situ. This event signaled Coyne’s propitious entry into the art world as a sculptor of note.

Coyne continues to embrace experimentation with new materials as a way to challenge herself and push the work in new directions. A shortlist of materials used between 1986 and 2005 — wood, hay, soil, tar, chicken wire, black sand, white powder, silk flowers, wax, dry wall, religious statues, taxidermy, hair, ribbons, bird cages, and other found objects — confirms the extent to which experimentation drives her sculptural ethos, as documented in her exhibition history by an ever-changing roster of materials and forms.

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Petah Coyne: Above and Beneath the Skin