Created in Place

Modernism is pleased to present: Created in Place an #EssentialArt Online Exhibition, September 5-October 24, 2020. 

Early this Spring Modernism temporarily closed, three days after opening Naomie Kremer’s Embodiment exhibition, due to the COVID-19 pandemic shelter-in-place orders.

Shortly thereafter we launched our #EssentialArt program, a series of video vignettes visiting our artists’ studios over the past five months. 

Today we are pleased to share a broad presentation of works “Created in Place” during this unprecedented and challenging period, a time in which our artists have flourished, each taking a different approach to their work. 

Judy Dater in Berkeley begun her Plague Journal on day one of the shelter-in-place, an ongoing photo- and text-based diary chronicling her new daily life. Gottfried Helnwein in Ireland, whose work, fittingly for this time, already addresses the human condition and ills of the world, revisited his iconic Mickey Mouse portrait series, with the large-scale painting Crimson Mouse, in which Mickey looms with portent. Jacques Villeglé, isolating in St. Malo, France, also “confined” himself to making drawings on the subject “L’art est?” (Art is?). For photographer Stephen Somerstein, who photo-documented the famous 1965 Selma to Montgomery march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., there was no question that he would take as his subject the current Black Lives Matter protests in San Francisco.

We hope you will enjoy this special #EssentialArt exhibition of works “Created in Place” during this shared global experience.

The exhibition is accompanied by a digital catalogue with essay by Jonathon Keats, which you can view by clicking here.