Art | Basel Statements, Leidy Churchman: Permanent Culture

16 – 19 June 2016

  • Nontheistic Dharma: Norms in a Nutshell , 2016 Oil on linen 51 x 83 in / 129.5 x 211 cm

  • B & W Medusa Sun , 2016 Oil on linen 10 3/4 x 15 in / 27 x 38 cm

  • Sex Nature , 2016 Oil on linen 24 x 20 in / 61x 51 cm

  • “Let’s Complete the Tasks Set Forth in the New Year’s Address" , 2016 Oil on linen 24 x 30 in / 61 x 76 cm

  • National Ex-Slave Mutual Relief Bounty and Pension Badges by Cameron Rowland , 2016 Oil on linen 21 x 26 in / 53 1/2 x 66 cm

  • Oil and Jazz , 2016 Oil on linen 72 x 60 in / 183 x 153 cm

  • Permaculture Official by Carolyn Watson-Paul , 2016 Oil on linen 58 x 53 in / 148 x 135 cm

  • Own-being Emptiness , 2016 Oil on linen 14 x 12 1/2 in / 35.5 x 32 cm

  • Pregnant Bulbs , 2016 Oil on linen 19 x 13 1/2 in / 48 x 34 cm

  • Saturn Teacher , 2016 Oil on linen 16 x 20 in / 40.5 x 51 cm

  • 17th Century Face II , 2016 Oil on linen 25 x 20 in / 51 x 63.5 cm

  • Synchronized Mitochondrial and Cytosolic Translation Programs , 2016 Oil on linen 20 x 16 in / 51 x 40.5 cm

  • The Subtle Body , 2016 Oil on linen 34 x 35 in / 86.5 x 89 cm

  • The Piers Untitled by Emily Roysdon , 2016 Oil on linen 40 1/2 x 45 1/2 in / 103 x 115.5 cm

  • Golden Black , 2016 Oil on linen 20 x 16 in / 40.5 x 51 cm

  • Golden Vagina Mouth of Time , 2016 Oil on linen 14 1/2 x 17 in / 35.5 x 43 cm

  • Golden Vagina Mouth of Time II , 2016 Oil on linen 14 1/2 x 17 in / 35.5 x 43 cm

  • 17th Century Indian Temple Yantra , 2016 Oil on linen 25 1/2 x 18 1/2 in / 65 x 47 cm

  • Blinding Medusa Sun , 2016 Oil on linen 29 1/2 x 33 in / 75 x 84 cm

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Murray Guy is pleased to present Permanent Culture, a solo project by Leidy Churchman for Art Basel Statements 2016.

Permanent Culture is a body of work that subtly and suggestively touches on current issues of ethics and ecology, science and spirituality. Churchman guides the viewer through an intricate ecosystem of imagery. Sourcing different modes of experience, styles, and media he renders pictures that defy uniformity and linearity, and where every appearance is a function of all the others.

The paintings meander through various systems of knowledge and representation such as Tantric iconography, a landscape in the isolated dictatorship of North Korea, illustrations of cellular generation and radical cultural histories seen through the lenses of fellow artists Emily Roysdon and Cameron Rowland. The pictures may seem disparate, they remain however part of an interconnected matrix, circulating in and out of their inherent identities and, by their coexistence, becoming less individually definable.

Today, the most dominant agricultural models are based on single crop cultivation. In order to make land suitable within this system, the existing natural environment must be fully eradicated. This dependence on practices of sterilization has propagated a troubling reality. Permaculture, a derivation from permanent agriculture, is a system of design principles that embraces interdependence, sensitivity, and regeneration. The process promotes simulating, or directly utilizing patterns observed in natural ecosystems. It is a method of working with, rather than against nature, of protracted and thoughtful observation, of looking at systems in all their functions, allowing them to demonstrate their own evolution, and further cultivating those interactivities.

But does a slight misapprehension occur, when we desire a permanent solution to our existence? The Buddhist view of everything as a tentative expression of one seamless ever-changing landscape, offers an alternate perspective on our relationship to time, and our position in reality. Churchman’s paintings raise questions about how individuality occurs, how permanence pervades physical, emotional, and psychic life, and what a release from the boundedness of things could mean culturally.

Leidy Churchman (b. 1979) lives and works in New York. His work is currently on view in Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna and Human Interest: Portraits from the Whitney’s Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. He has participated in group exhibitions at Kunsthalle Bern; Highline, New York; Yale Union, Portland; Museum Brandhorst, Munich; The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen; ICA, Philadelphia; Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; Human Resources, Los Angeles; Stroom Den Haag, The Hague; the Museum of Art at Rhode Island School of Design; and MoMA PS1, Long Island City, NY. In 2013, Churchman had a solo exhibition at Boston University Gallery on the occasion of which the book Emergency was published by Dancing Foxes Press. Churchman received his MFA from Columbia University in 2010, and his BA from Hampshire College in 2002. From 2011-12, he was a resident artist at Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.