July 16, 2020

Grace Weaver at James Cohan

Steps, Grace Weaver's exhibit at James Cohan, showcases her signature elastic-limbed characters exposed, experiencing failure, embarrassment, humiliation, and fear.
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Galleries

About the Exhibit - Steps 

It’s been two years since Grace Weaver’s last exhibit at James Cohan, so I was SO excited to see the press release for her show Steps, on view now July 15th – September 12th, 2020.

Grace Weaver at James Cohan

This exhibit will run in parallel with another exhibit of Weaver’s drawings at Cohan’s Grand St. location in the Lower East Side. 

Grace Weaver at James Cohan
“In the paintings that comprise Grace Weaver’s aptly-titled exhibition STEPS, people on the move in the busy city rush up stairs and tumble down them. They collide abruptly on the sidewalk, run through the streets, and stomp each other’s feet. Observing this collection of steps and missteps, a panoply of related idioms spring to mind, all of them evoking feelings of instability, awkwardness, or failure—key themes within Weaver’s work.” - curator Susan Thompson (source
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
“In her striking portrayals of the tragicomic every day, Grace Weaver examines the charged social and cultural conditions that underlie self-concept, intimacy, and individual experience.” (source
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
“In this new body of work, it is apparent that the emotional stakes have been raised: while the earlier work mined the subtleties of minor quotidian anxieties, the new work is much less ambiguous in its exploration of the human psyche.” - curator Susan Thompson (source
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
“I’ve always been interested in very, very subtle emotional territory, like a painting of someone being passive-aggressive or subtly self-conscious—these tiny, non-grand emotions, in these paintings, I want to push that type of discomfort into a feeling of failure. Or the feeling of failing and then watching yourself being watched failing.” - Grace Weaver (source
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
“In her work, the body itself becomes scenario: playful, sweeping lines and dense planes of luminous color act as linguistic elements, each directing its own physical weight and affect onto her female subjects.” (source
Grace Weaver at James Cohan

About the Artist - Grace Weaver 

Grace Weaver lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. 

Grace Weaver at James Cohan

She received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2015.

Grace Weaver at James Cohan
“[Grace Weaver] is best known for paintings that highlight her subjects’ fraught interior lives through quiet moments rendered in bold swaths of radiant color.” curator Susan Thompson (source
Grace Weaver at James Cohan
“The protagonists in Weaver’s solitary female portraits are not necessarily drawn from life—rather, the artist considers them archetypes of feminine self-presentation. They are pictured in once-private spaces of preparation—the kitchen, the vanity mirror—that have become semi-public.” (source
Grace Weaver at James Cohan

Her website and Instagram.

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