If in New York or close by, do not miss, do not miss, do not miss the great Irving Petlin exhibitions — 3 of them at the same time, i.e. right now, in three different galleries:
— The KENT Gallery, 541 West 25th Street, Second Floor, New York NY 10001. Hours: Tue-Sat 10am-6pm
— Tonight, Tuesday, 9 February the exhibition at the Feigen Gallery opens at 6 p.m. —
The picture above is the left half of a major new work started in December 2008, Gaza Guernica, on show at the Kent Gallery. To see the other half of the diptych, go to the Kent Gallery’s website & click the “here” at the bottom of the page. It will open the pdf of what I think is one of the best designed painting e-catalogues it has been my pleasure to see. I do hope that the gallery will eventually be able to bring out an actual, printed version. I will report in some more detail on the shows, once I’ve seen the third one. Meanwhile here is a quote from R.B. Kitaj and, below that, a video of Petlin commenting on some of works at the Kent gallery.
It is an article of faith with me that good and true artists will always represent the human face and figure and presence until the end of time. Some will not. Those who will, as they always have, will transform the depictive art by power of unique gifts and character and personality and doggedness and luck and though the courtesy, as it were, of the time and place in which they live and interact.
Do not be impatient with those of us, like Petlin, who are having to reread our depictive history slowly, as if in this era of later modernism that history is written in a lost distant tongue.
—R.B. Kitaj, Catalonia, 1977
"Interglacial Narrows: Readings by Pierre Joris” (details to be announced)
Wednesday, November 29, 4PM
Brown University
Lecture: Witnessing for the Witness: The Ferryman’s Labor in Translating Paul Celan.
Thursday, November 30, 5:30PM
Brown University Bookshop
Poetry Reading
Thursday, January 4, 2024
Reading
Segue (Artists Space, 11 Cortlandt Alley, NYC)
ABOUT
Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.
In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).
Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.
When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.
Thanks for this, Pierre. Wish we could be there.
I knew Irving Petlin about 50 years ago and was sure he would become a major artist. It is clear here that he has.
My painting instructor referenced Irving Petlin when speaking about my work. Thought I should have a look. Glad I did!