Ghada Amer: New Directions and Disobedient Thoughts at Marianne Boesky Gallery

Upon entering this exhibition, I was taken to the wall pieces immediately, especially the use of vibrantly colored embroidery string mimicking paint strokes on the canvas. Art historical references and connections are very prevalent in the works of this exhibit. It was refreshing to see this conversation of the painting canon being brought up in a contemporary light by the use of this novel medium. Amer’s love and interest in the history of painting is apparent, and her works show art historical influences intertwined with intuition and a strong painterly hand that is present despite there being no paint in the show.

After reading further into Amer’s career and process, this body of work began to open up in several different directions: female figures, the painting canon, and new perspectives. The canvas pieces are meant to be seen up close. The intertwining of the string and colors offers vibrant interactions and discoveries, and the small details of the placement of female figures beneath the layers of string make the conversations on this work and the role of women amongst a mostly masculine modernist canon even more intricate. The bronze pieces, offering intricate shapes and a strong flow and curve, continue the conversation throughout the gallery as well.

This show is a great synthesis of the history of painting and the presence of the artist within the work, as she paves her own way into the conversation of painting. Ghada Amer’s works take several sculptural mediums not in the ‘realm’ of painting and bring them into the conversation of painting. With this exhibition, two-dimensional and three-dimensional works utilize the language of painting and pull it into different mediums. In using embroidery especially, Amer reimagines the traditionally feminized materials and subjects of such histories in order to insert herself into the canon.

Pieces such as My Homage to the Square 1 and 2, reference Josef Albers. Amer also alludes to the geometries of Piet Mondrian and a wide array of modernist painters who are also committed to investigating the grid, with several of these works as well. My first connection besides Albers was Brice Marden. Amer focuses on the surface and geometries of the grid with her materials similar to how Marden focuses on building up his surfaces with intricate details that also require closer looking.

*My Homage to the Square 1, 2025, Embroidery and gel medium on canvas, 96 x 96 inches and installation shot*

By including images of female figures hidden under the strings on the surface of the works, Amer hints at the ways in which women have been obscured from art history. With the excess of strings covering the image, viewers have to take more time to delve into the layers, and thus, they delve into a conversation about art history. Amer has been redirected on multiple occasions within her career, but she has found new ways to bring these conversations to the surface, to bring her take on painting into the spotlight. Amer has also brought women into the fold of all manner of artmaking through her use of imagery, material, form, and message, especially within the works of this exhibition.

*Detail Shot of Female figures within the works*

With the clay sculptures complementing the pieces, Amer uses them to bring forth the multifaceted conversation about painting. Amer sculpts the clay using instinct and intuition, similar to the automatic writing and drawing favored by the Surrealists. The resulting sculptures are twisting, contorting forms, going in various directions. These pieces may symbolize the redirections that Amer had faced throughout her time as an artist. However, those changes in trajectory did not stop her. Instead, they helped her to construct her own way and build up these conglomerates that complement her linework on the canvas. She finishes these sculptures in brilliant chromatic hues. This use of colorful glaze layers is also continuing her endless pursuit of painting. Both avenues of her work come together in this exhibition, continuing her conversation about painting and her take on it through new mediums, influenced by old ones.

*Chinese Thoughts in Blue, 2024, Bronze, 60 x 28 x 24 inches*

All images provided by Marianne Boesky Gallery

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Ghada Amer, Disobedient Thoughts– At Marianne Boesky Gallery
May 1st- June 14th,507 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011,Marianne Boesky Gallery, @marianneboeskygallery

About the Writer: Taylor Bielecki lives in Gowanus, where her studio is, and works at Pratt Institute, where she earned her MFA, she also studied at Penn State, where she earned a BA in English and a BFA in Fine Arts. She finished as a finalist in the Kennedy Center’s VSA National Emerging Young Artist program for 2017; where she earned an award of Excellence. She has shown prints internationally in a print exchange in Australia and exhibitions in Dubai, India and the Glasgow School of Art. She has also shown paintings internationally in Gallery 24N, PhilaMOCA’s juried exhibitions in Philadelphia, Pa., Perry Lawson Fine Art in Nyack, NY, BWAC in Red Hook, and Greenpoint Gallery in Brooklyn. Taylor has joined Art Spiel as a contributing writer.