Gerald Ferguson
Gerald Ferguson, Work, Stencil through Frottage From 1968, Jan 7 – Feb 12, 2012

CANADA is proud to present this exhibition of paintings by Gerald Ferguson curated by Luke Murphy. It includes eleven major works and is accompanied by a catalog with essays and pieces by Lawrence Weiner, Donald Kuspit and Peggy Gale.

Ropes, chains, clothesline, ash cans, drain covers, black enamel house paint rubbed across raw canvas, repeated, rearranged and repeated again -- the work of Gerald Ferguson appears in New York for the first time in forty years. This array of eleven paintings include works from his 1968 typographical "period" paintings and a key group of his later frottages.

Ferguson was a first generation conceptual artist whose early conversations informed his approach to painting throughout his career. From his 'task oriented' paintings to his later rigorous methodology, painting was, in his words, one of the only things he really understood. His work, he said "let beauty in through the back door."

GERALD FERGUSON. WORK. is a glimpse of a career driven by an autotelic logic. It begins with his early stenciled grids and ends with his late works, created by passing black-enamel laden rollers over abject objects under raw canvas and forming expansive landscapes of black indexical marks or dense monumental architectonic compositions.

Ferguson's work can be characterized as sets of sometimes beautiful, sometimes difficult tensions between the manifest logic and the absurd simplicity of the process, between roughshod production and the sensitivity of the chosen compositions, between blackness and the promise of light.

There will be a performance A Choral Reading on Saturday, February 11 at 7pm and a reception will follow.

In 1972 Gerald Ferguson scored a reading of his Standard Corpus of Present Day English Language Usage Arranged By Word Length in 20 units for a chorus of 26 voices. It was performed at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design that same year.

Ferguson (1937-2009) published "The Standard Corpus of Present Day English Language Usage Arranged By Word Length and alphabetized within word length" in a small edition of 300 copies in 1970. It represents the culmination of a series of conceptual artworks exploring the alphabet, which began in 1968. This series includes Ferguson's typewritten Alphabet Pages and stenciled Period or Dot Paintings. Together with the Corpus, they form an integral part of the canon of systemic and process art and stands alongside the most significant achievements of concrete poetry in Canada. Ferguson considered the Corpus one of his most important works, once describing it as "a variable serial sculpture through time".

The Choral Reading will be performed at CANADA on February 12th starting at 7pm and a reception will follow.

In 1972 Gerald Ferguson scored a reading of his Standard Corpus of Present Day English Language Usage Arranged By Word Length in 20 units for a chorus of 26 voices. It was performed at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design that same year.

Ferguson (1937-2009) published "The Standard Corpus of Present Day English Language Usage Arranged By Word Length and alphabetized within word length" in a small edition of 300 copies in 1970. It represents the culmination of a series of conceptual artworks exploring the alphabet, which began in 1968. This series includes Ferguson's typewritten Alphabet Pages and stenciled Period or Dot Paintings. Together with the Corpus, they form an integral part of the canon of systemic and process art and stands alongside the most significant achievements of concrete poetry in Canada. Ferguson considered the Corpus one of his most important works, once describing it as "a variable serial sculpture through time".

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