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Artist-Led Tour of Elizabeth Turk’s “Written in Stone” at Hirschl & Adler
October 24, 2023 | 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
As our culture shifts, artists are the witnesses, reflecting back to us how our world is changing; memorializing the endangered, and mourning the lost. Artist Elizabeth Turk speaks through one of our most permanent media, marble, to immerse us in a conversation about the fragility of handwritten language. Turk herself will guide the ArtTable group on a tour of Written in Stone, with Hirschl & Adler Managing Director, Elizabeth Feld.
Elegant and understated, the beauty of calligraphic scripts has resonated across cultures and time. Elizabeth Turk: Written in Stone, a group of twenty-three hand-carved marble sculptures made over the past decade, marks the change caused by technological communication – the ubiquitous keyboard and AI – and seeks to question the transformation of everyday handwriting. What happens when the curved lines of a scripted passage no longer hold meaning, or even exist? Or when the generations of tomorrow merely glance at a handwritten letter, fail to understand it, cannot decipher it, and simply move on, losing the nuances to history? Through this new body of work, Elizabeth Turk conveys this fundamental shift with unmatched grace and technical dexterity. There is an obvious paradox in a memorial of something as ephemeral and humancentric as script created with a solid, seemingly permanent rock gilded with a mineral, gold leaf. Long after the changes of this moment take place, these sculptures will remind us of the strength, endurance, and lasting importance of what we have left behind.
Admission:
- ArtTable Members – $15
- Member Guests – $25
- Public – $30
This program is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Artist Talks are presented with support from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
• • •
Featured Image: Elizabeth Turk (b. 1961) Passage 8, 2016-2023 Marble and gold leaf, 8 3/8 x 23 x 2 1/2 in. © Eric Stoner, Courtesy of Hirschl & Adler Modern and the Artist.
Photo Below: © Eric Stoner, Courtesy of Hirschl & Adler Modern and the Artist.
About the Artist
Born in Pasadena and raised in Orange County, Elizabeth Turk earned her M.F.A. at the Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. A recipient of awards including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2010), a Barnett and Annalee Newman Foundation Fellowship (2010), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2011), Turk is internationally recognized for transforming her signature medium of marble into strikingly intricate objects that defy convention and challenge our preconceptions of what marble can do. Through the use of electric grinders, dental tools, and files, Turk pushes her medium to its limit, creating in each sculpture a provocative tension between the intrinsic strength of the stone and its inherent fragility, while speaking to larger conceptual and spiritual concerns of time, matter, and space.
During the twenty-two years that Turk has been represented by Hirschl & Adler Modern, the gallery has mounted five solo exhibitions of her work, each accompanied by publications; as well as a solo Art Kabinett at Art Basel Miami Beach (2012), a solo presentation at Masterpiece London (2014), and a solo presentation at the ADAA Art Show in 2017.
Turk’s work resides in numerous prestigious private and public collections, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Jewish Museum, New York, NY; American University, Washington, D.C. (formerly, the Corcoran Gallery of Art) and the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Weatherspoon Gallery, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, NC; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC; the Catalina Museum for Art & History, CA; and the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis, TN. Institutional monographic exhibitions include Tipping Point: Echoes of Extinction, Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI (2022); Double Take, with Mel Chin, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park (2022), Elizabeth Turk: Heaven, Earth, Home, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, VT (2018-19); Elizabeth Turk: Sentient Forms, Laguna Art Museum, CA (2015); Elizabeth Turk: Wings, The Dayton Art Institute, OH (2013); and Elizabeth Turk, The Collars: Tracings of Thought, Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC (2004).
Turk lives and works in Santa Ana, CA, and New York, NY, and is the cofounder of ET Projects, a Foundation that infuses civic spaces with interdisciplinary communal art.
Elizabeth Feld is the Managing Director and Director, Furniture & Decorative Arts at Hirshl & Adler. She curated the gallery’s 50-anniversary exhibition, Of the Newest Fashion: Masterpieces of American Neo-Classical Decorative Arts (2001–02). In 2006, she co- curated Elizabeth Turk: The Collars and In Pointed Style: The Gothic Revival in America, 1800–1860, both accompanied by extensive catalogues; and in 2007, For Work & For Play: A Selection of American Neo-Classical Furniture. More recent exhibitions include: Elizabeth Turk: Recent Sculpture (2008); The World of Duncan Phyfe: The Arts of New York, 1800–1847 (2012), a celebration of the gallery’s 60th anniversary; Elizabeth Turk Cages (2012); Alexander Creswell: Fire & Light (2012); Very Rich & Handsome: American Neo-Classical Decorative Arts (2014–15); Elizabeth Turk: Tensions (2016); Augmenting the Canon: Recent Acquisitions of American Neo-Classical Decorative Arts (2018); and Elizabeth Turk: Tipping Point: Echoes of Extinction (2019).
Elizabeth is a regular lecturer on American Decorative Arts and the antiques and art market. Elizabeth offers advisory services for clients in a range of specialties both within and beyond the gallery’s area of expertise. Elizabeth served as the Chairman of the Winter Antiques Show Dealers’ Committee for six years. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from The University of Pennsylvania and has a Master’s Degree in Fine and Decorative Arts from Sotheby’s Institute.
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