MISERICORDIA

Images courtesy of Andreas Branch/Patrick McMullan

PRISM

On Friday, September 24th, PRISM celebrated the opening of MISERICORDIA. A private preview was held a few hours before the exhibition was made public.

The exhibition brings together Masters from the Renaissance and work by contemporary artists. It juxtaposes 15^th to 17^th Century Old Masters with performance video from the 1970s and contemporary artworks. Curated by Birte Kleemann, Director at The Pace Gallery, the works examine the treatment of Mercy as represented from devotional paintings of the 15th century to the use of the artist’s body as a metaphor for the suffering of humankind in contemporary works. It emphasizes how these artists explore pain, fear and penance, in the sense that today we either fail to rejoice in God’s Mercy or that we are too occupied with personal matters to be merciful towards others.

Works by the artists Marina Abramović, Joseph Beuys, Monica Bonvicini, Louise Bourgeois, Chris Burden, James Lee Byars, Lucio Fontana, Terence Koh, Anders Krisár, Giovanni di Marco, Jonathan Meese, Giovanni Battista Naldini, Olaf Nicolai, Jen DeNike, Angel Otero, Antonio di Pietro, Sterling Ruby, Katharina Sieverding, Bill Viola, and xhafabdessemed (Sislej Xhafa and Adel Abdessemed) will assess how the artistic expression of Mercy is demonstrated, has transitioned, vanished, and in some cases persevered and reappeared through centuries and multiple artistic mediums.

The gallery is especially pleased to have three exceptional works by Emile Antoine-Bourdelle, Felice Ficherelli and Alessandro Gherardini on loan from the Haukohl Family Collection, a world-class private collection based in Houston, Texas. It is the largest private collection of Florentine painting in America.

A scholarly catalog that features essays by academic writers David Carrier, Alex Gartenfeld and Dimitri Ozerkov, and designed by Jonathan Zawada, is being published as a companion to the exhibition.