Artists Space

Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude

January 13 – March 18, 2023

“I began the day wanting to bring into convergence three activities of being—what I’d seen, what I’d read, and what I’d drawn—and to say about these acts how they made lines in the world that ran alongside other lines, and how all these lines together made environments of the earth, where I could put my body and you could put yours, and these would be lines always entwined because there was little if anything you could say or make without calling forth other lines, and this was how you knew you were where you were and the ground was worth cultivating and that there was life beneath the ground.”

—Renee Gladman

An abstract drawing consisting of horizontal white lines scratched across black paper with circles interspersed throughout the composition. On the right side of the drawing are arrows, and blurred, scribbled lines and illegible text. Yellow marks accentuate different parts of the composition.
Renee Gladman, Untitled (Moon Math), 2022. Pigment, oil, pastel, 30 x 44 inches. Courtesy of the Artist [An abstract drawing consisting of horizontal white lines scratched across black paper with circles interspersed throughout the composition. On the right side of the drawing are arrows, and blurred, scribbled lines and illegible text. Yellow marks accentuate different parts of the composition.]

Artists Space is pleased to present the first New York solo exhibition of the poet, novelist, and visual artist Renee Gladman. Beginning in 2006, Gladman’s extended cross-genre experimentation has compelled her to invent a unique hybrid drawing-writing practice that allows her to enact the syntactical preconditions for language. In mixed-media works on paper, she interpolates multiple diagrammatic systems—those emerging from architecture and city planning, planetary movements, data visualization, and mathematics—within an exploration of her own nervous system and bodily gestures.

Gladman’s drawings initially appeared in book form, with the printed page serving as a test site for her eventual efforts in recombining and intercalating prose, poetry, architecture, and drawing. The written word and language itself are simultaneously embellished and obliterated in series of formally particular works that have increased in complexity and scale as they have gained independence from their association with the printed page. As dense interior spaces of subjective unknowing, they move through a vast range of graphic and associative potentialities that assess the impact of Blackness, futurity, and erupting architectures on the topographies of the sentence.

For her exhibition at Artists Space, Gladman presents a selection of new and recent drawings made with pastel, gouache, acrylic, and white pigment on primarily black paper. Her sometimes collaborator, the critic Fred Moten, has referred to this initial surface as “the blackground: that nonrepresentational capacity that lets all representation take place.”

A color image of a gallery space taken from a wide angle with several framed works hanging on the wall. On the wall on the left, four drawings made on white paper are displayed in a horizontal line. On the perpendicular wall, three works made on black paper are displayed in two columns. The left column is a single work, the right column has two works. On the right wall, nine works are displayed as a grid. All drawings depict diagrammatic systems.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of a gallery space taken from a wide angle with several framed works hanging on the wall. On the wall on the left, four drawings made on white paper are displayed in a horizontal line. On the perpendicular wall, three works made on black paper are displayed in two columns. The left column is a single work, the right column has two works. On the right wall, nine works are displayed as a grid. All drawings depict diagrammatic systems.]
A color image of nine framed works displayed as a grid against a white wall. The drawings are done on black paper and depict abstract compositions made up of colorful shapes and strokes, and white lines and arrows.
Renee Gladman, Slowly We Have the Feeling: Scores, 2019–22, pastel and pigment on paper (grid of nine), dimensions variable. Image courtesy Artists Space, New York.  Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of nine framed works displayed as a grid against a white wall. The drawings are done on black paper and depict abstract compositions made up of colorful shapes and strokes, and white lines and arrows.]
A color image of three framed works against a white wall. The drawings are done on black paper and depict abstract compositions made up of white, and colorful shapes, lines and strokes.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of three framed works against a white wall. The drawings are done on black paper and depict abstract compositions made up of white, and colorful shapes, lines and strokes.]
A color image of four framed works displayed against a white wall. The drawings depict abstract compositions made up of colorful shapes and lines, and pencil strokes.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of four framed works displayed against a white wall. The drawings depict abstract compositions made up of colorful shapes and lines, and pencil strokes.]
A close-up color image of a framed work displayed against a white wall. The drawing depicts a colorful abstract composition with a brown circle being the main figure from where trianagles and lines emerge. Soft pencil strokes complement the composition.
Renee Gladman, Grasses 2, 2022, graphite and oil pastel on paper, 22 x 30 inches. Image courtesy Artists Space, New York. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A close-up color image of a framed work displayed against a white wall. The drawing depicts a colorful abstract composition with a brown circle being the main figure from where trianagles and lines emerge. Soft pencil strokes complement the composition.]
A color image of a gallery space with two columns running across the room. On the left wall, four framed abstract drawings on black paper are displayed in a horizontal line. On the right wall, three framed abstract drawings on white paper are shown in a horizontal line.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of a gallery space with two columns running across the room. On the left wall, four framed abstract drawings on black paper are displayed in a horizontal line. On the right wall, three framed abstract drawings on white paper are shown in a horizontal line.]
A color image of four framed works displayed in a horizontal line on a white wall. The drawings, made on black paper, depict abstract compositions made up of white lines, arrows, circles, and illegible textlines.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of four framed works displayed in a horizontal line on a white wall. The drawings, made on black paper, depict abstract compositions made up of white lines, arrows, circles, and illegible textlines.]
An abstract drawing consisting of two white circles and two grey rectangles, from where lines and shapes emerge. Blurred white lines, and illegible text complement the composition. On both sides, green strokes, and a continuous white line create other abstract figures.
Renee Gladman, Black Wandering, 2022, oil pastel, pigment, and gouache on paper, 30 x 44 inches. Image courtesy Artists Space, New York. Photo: Filip Wolak. [An abstract drawing consisting of two white circles and two grey rectangles, from where lines and shapes emerge. Blurred white lines, and illegible text complement the composition. On both sides, green strokes, and a continuous white line create other abstract figures.]
A color image of the corner of a gallery space with two columns. Across the two white walls, six framed abstract drawings on black paper are displayed in a horizontal line.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of the corner of a gallery space with two columns. Across the two white walls, six framed abstract drawings on black paper are displayed in a horizontal line.]
A color image of three framed works hang on the white wall. The works, all made on black paper, consist of colorful shapes, white line drawings and illegible text that form abstract compsitions.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of three framed works hang on the white wall. The works, all made on black paper, consist of colorful shapes, white line drawings and illegible text that form abstract compsitions.]
A color image of a drawing consisting of green, purple, yellow, and red lines and shapes that form an abstract composition. Single line white drawings complement the composition.
Renee Gladman, Untitled (black city), 2022, oil pastel and pigment on paper, 30 x 44 inches. Image courtesy Artists Space, New York. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of a drawing consisting of green, purple, yellow, and red lines and shapes that form an abstract composition. Single line white drawings complement the composition.]
A color image of a gallery space with two columns in the middle. Framed drawings depicting colorful abstract compositions hang on the white walls. Five of the drawings are made on black paper, and two on white paper.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of a gallery space with two columns in the middle. Framed drawings depicting colorful abstract compositions hang on the white walls. Five of the drawings are made on black paper, and two on white paper.]
A color image of a gallery space. On the left wall hangs a framed work that consists of a colorful abstract drawing made on white paper, with pencil strokes surrounding the colored shapes. On the right wall, three framed works hang on a horizontal line. The three abstract works are made on black paper, and depict colorful compositions.
Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude. Installation view, Artists Space, 2023. Photo: Filip Wolak. [A color image of a gallery space. On the left wall hangs a framed work that consists of a colorful abstract drawing made on white paper, with pencil strokes surrounding the colored shapes. On the right wall, three framed works hang on a horizontal line. The three abstract works are made on black paper, and depict colorful compositions.]

Renee Gladman (b. Atlanta, Georgia, 1971) is a writer and artist preoccupied with crossings, thresholds, and geographies as they play out at the intersection of poetry, prose, drawing, and architecture. Her work examines how drawing emerges from the body and how narrative takes shape below the semantic level. Gladman’s first solo exhibition, THE DREAM OF SENTENCES, took place at Wesleyan University in fall 2022. She is the author of three collections of drawing-writing—Prose Architectures (2017), One Long Black Sentence (2020), and Plans for Sentences (2022)—as well as many works of fiction, essay, and poetry, including Calamities (2016) and the Ravicka series (begun in 2010). Gladman has been awarded fellowships, artist grants, and residencies from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, the Foundation for Contemporary Art, the Lannan Foundation, and the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, and she is a 2021 Windham-Campbell Prize winner in fiction.

Accommodations generously provided by Nine Orchard.

Support for Artists Space’s exhibitions and programs is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, The Cy Twombly Foundation, The Teiger Foundation, The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, Imperfect Family Foundation, Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, The Stavros Niarchos Foundation, The Willem de Kooning Foundation, The Fox Aarons Foundation, Herman Goldman Foundation, The Destina Foundation, The Luce Foundation, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Arison Arts Foundation, The David Rockefeller Fund, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, The Jill and Peter Kraus Foundation, The Richard Pousette-Dart Foundation.

Krasinski, Jennifer. "Renee Gladman." 4Columns. February 3, 2023. Online.

Packard, Cassie. "Renee Gladman: Narratives of Magnitude." The Brooklyn Rail. February, 2023. Online.

Bury, Louis. "The Physical Labor of Writing." Hyperallergic. March 2, 2023. Online.

Ives, Lucy. "What You Don't Know Your Mind Knows." The New York Review. March 4, 2023. Online.

Vincler, John. “What to See in N.Y.C. Galleries in March.” The New York Times. March 15, 2023. Online.

    Drawing done on black paper of a white line with shapes and marks on it, along with three circles. One circle is colored in green with a red line extending from the top right and across the page intersecting with the white line. A green triangle sits below a small line of white text on the upper left of the composition.
    Renee Gladman, Slowly We Have the Feeling: Score, 2019-2022. Pastel and pigment on paper. Courtesy of the Artist [Drawing done on black paper of a white line with shapes and marks on it, along with three circles. One circle is colored in green with a red line extending from the top right and across the page intersecting with the white line. A green triangle sits below a small line of white text on the upper left of the composition.]