HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY

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Halsey McKay Gallery presents an online exhibition of new works on paper by Elise Ferguson. A new essay on Ferguson’s practice by artist Ethan Greenbaum accompanies the presentation.

Ferguson’s pigmented plaster works have embraced a digital yet hand-made quality for years. Loosely based on mathematical puzzles and geometric variation, her works on paper fully display the mastery of color, composition and material as her signature paintings on panel. Each work is built up in multiple thin layers of pigmented plaster applied by hand, with trowels, through vinyl masks, and silkscreened. Irregularities in the surface and the depth of the relief create a play between illusionistic space and the works’ physical surfaces.  Her goal is not perfection: visible scuffs and pencil markings attest to the process. Traces of her process and history of each layer is revealed in the deckled edges of the paper sheets.

If you are interested in purchasing works please click INQUIRE below to email our team.

This Elise Ferguson viewing room is now closed.
INQUIRE HERE for currently available works.

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ETHAN GREENBAUM on ELISE FERGUSON

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The field of history contains many circuits which never close

-George Kubler, The Shape of Time

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Fresco to disco—Adobe Photoshop and adobe bricks. Elise Ferguson’s lithe art encompasses painting, sculpture, textiles and graphic design. It is equal parts ancient architecture and digital vectors. The grace of her work lies in its ability to circumscribe all these possibilities without snagging on any of them. When she and I recently did a virtual studio visit, I kept thinking about time and George Kubler’s idea of art as an evolving sequence, forever open to reinvention.

Ferguson’s art is driven by iterative combinations and her cosmos of aesthetic inspirations begins at the beginning. Her mother was a clothing designer and her stepfather an architect. She grew up surrounded by ceramics, folk art, avant garde furniture and adventurous clothing—including an iconic 70s era Kenzo jacket that has a special place in her creative pantheon. 

Materially, Ferguson’s work makes chains of connection moving backwards and forwards. The artist’s adoption of silkscreen as a painting tool reflects the design culture of her youth, while the screen’s grid prefigures the pixels of the digital software she now uses to plan her work. The screen also frames her historical influences, including pre modern Mexican textiles and weaving. Similarly, her palette of vivid, acidic hues is mixed with plaster to produce vibrantly saturated compositions that are literally weighted with the gravitas of historical fresco.

Graphically, Ferguson’s linear marks are crisp and fluid. Zig zagging lines and looping lozenges glide past or stop abruptly at the edge of her panels and pages. Arrival and departure are meta subjects. The marks are pictographs of time: heartbeats, motion lines, waves. The compositions are centerless and scaleless with no start or finish. This airiness is grounded by the artist’s carefully chosen material supports including wood, linen and aluminum. As per Kubler, there is no meaning without form. 

For all their richness in color, composition and material, it’s paradoxically abstraction and restraint that allows Ferguson’s art to absorb so many temporalities and cultural references. For the artist, abstraction corrals and circulates meaning without settling into any static interpretation. Similarly, by limiting her graphic language, she can focus on the cultural ambience of color or the historical import of woven cloth or enamelled metal. The clarity of her decisions gives the work a unique balance of lightness and rigor that is the heart of creativity.

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Elise Ferguson lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She has had recent solo exhibitions with Halsey Mckay Gallery, East Hampton & New York, NY; 57 W 57, New York; Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco; White Columns, NY; and at Barton College, NC; and Illinois State University, IL. Her works have been included in exhibitions at Luhring Augustine, Team Gallery, Dieu Donne Papermill, The Sculpture Center, Andrew Kreps, CRG Gallery, Longhouse Projects, NY; Fourteen30 Contemporary, Portland; Norwich Gallery, England; Lothringer Dreizen, Munich; among others. She has been awarded several residencies including at MacDowell Colony, Socrates Sculpture Park, Dieu Donne Papermill, and was the 2014 winner of the EXPO Chicago Northern Trust Purchase Prize.

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ELISE FERGUSON

EDUCATION
1995 MFA  University of Illinois at Chicago, IL
1988 BFA  The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 June Room, Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2018 East,  Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Cloudbank, 57 W 57 Arts, New York, NY
2017 Shutter, Halsey McKay Gallery, New York, NY
Eights Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Ripple Drift, Barton Art Galleries, Barton College, Wilson, NC
2016 Citron, Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Flippity, 106 Green Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Elise Ferguson, NADA New York, Halsey Mckay Gallery, New York, NY
2015 This Way That, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Suddenly, Last Summer, Longhouse Projects, New York, NY
2014 Striped Knot, Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2012 Elise Ferguson & David Kennedy-Cutler, Halsey Mckay Gallery, East Hampton, NY
2011 Elise Ferguson, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, NY
2009 Capital X, Envoy Gallery, New York
Newport News Moon, June 25, 2009, Envoy Gallery, New York
2008 Elise Ferguson/Arnold Kemp, Envoy Gallery, New York
2004 Elise Ferguson, Livingroom D Lyx, Malmo, Sweden
2003 Floor/Wall, University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, IL
2001 White Room, White Columns, New York
1996 Elise Ferguson, Beret Intl Gallery, Chicago

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 Fluid Structure, Massey Klein Gallery, New York, NY
2019 Symmetry, Able Baker Contemporary, Portland, ME
Summer, Frampton Co,Bridgehampton, NY
Pulled in Brooklyn, IPCNY, New York, NY
2018 Geometric Behavior, Ikast Kunstpakhus, Ikast, Denmark
Archival Exhibition, Dieu Donné Papermill, Brooklyn, NY
2017 New York, New Work, Albada Jelgersma, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Dilineation, Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY
2016 Stone Soup Nasty, Orgy Park, Brooklyn, NY
2015Works On Paper, Hunted Projects, Tilburg, Netherlands
The Architectural Impulse, curated by Warren James, Cristen Tierney Gallery, New York, NY
Suddenly Last Summer,  Longhouse Projects, New York, NY
Summer Mixer,  Joshua Liner Gallery, New York, NY
2014Color as Structure, McKenzie Fine Art, New York, New York
2013 Paint Off, Paint On, Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, New York
2011 Entaglement, Regina Rex, Queens, New York
Entaglement, ArtBlogArtBlog, New York, New York
Rich-oo-uh’l, Richoo-uh’l, Jolie Laide, Philadelphia, PA
Domestic Goods, curated by Ryan Wallace, Eric Firestone Gallery, East Hampton New York
2010 Default State Network, Raid Projects, Los Angeles and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York (catalog)
Forth Estate, Fourteen 30 Contemporary, Portland, Oregon
2009 New Prints: Spring, International Print Center New York, New York
2007 Workspace Program 2001-7, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York
2006 Bunch Alliance and Dissolve, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, Ohio
New Editions, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, Brooklyn
2005 Talk to the Land, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
Greater Brooklyn, CRG Gallery, New York
2004 Sleight of Hand, Lemon Sky Projects (curated by Hudson Clearing), Miami
Spacemakers, Lothringer Dreizen, Munich
hung, drawn, and quartered, Team, New York
New Projects, Dieu Donne Papermill, New York
The Invisible Revealed, Surrealist Drawings from the Drukier Collection; Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, Maine
Multistorey, Pump House Gallery, London
2003 New Slang, Luring Augustine, New York (curated by Claudia Altman-Siegel)
Yard; Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (curated by Robyn Donohue and Alyson Baker)
EAST International, Norwich Gallery, Norwich, England (selectors Toby Webster/Eva Rothschild), catalog
Slimvolume, Norwich Gallery, Norwich, England (curated by Andrew Hunt)
2002 Accelerated Grimace, Silverstein Gallery, New York (curated by David Hunt)
2001 Peaks, Kagan Martos, New York
2000 The May Show, Sculpture Center, New York
Its a Cruel World, White Columns, New York
Mental Wilderness, Gayle Gates, New York
1999 Outer Boroughs, White Columns, New York
Five Easy Pieces, Lombard Freid, New York
As if the world ended on the 5th floor, Blohard, Philadelphia
1997 Real World, New Langton Arts, San Francisco
Best II, Beret Intl Gallery, Chicago
1996 Arts in Celebration Regional Biennial, University Museum, SIU-Carbondale- (brochure)
ARCO, Beret Intl Gallery, Madrid
1995 The Uncomfortable Show, MWMWM, Chicago
Profiles, Randolph Street Gallery, Chicago
Depends, Gallery 400, Chicago
Aesthetic Cranks, Beret Intl Gallery, Chicago
1994 Flora, Chicago Botanical Garden, Chicago
The Slit Show, Layaway, Chicago
1992 Things, Beret Intl Gallery, Chicago
Thats Nice Dear, Beret Intl Gallery, Chicago
1991 Strange Video, N.A.M.E. Gallery, Chicago

AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES
2018 Dieu Donne Paper Variables Artist
2017 Barton College Artist-in-Residence, Wilson, NY
2014 Northern Trust Purchase Prize: Expo Chicago, Chicago, IL
2006 Artist-in-Residence: University Nevada, Las Vegas
2004 MacDowell Colony
2003 Artist-in-Residence: Illinois State University
EAST International Exhibition Grant
Socrates Sculpture Park Residency
Dieu Donne Papermill Workspace Program Grant
1996 SIU-Carbondale, University Museum: Merit Award
Illinois Arts Council: Special Assistance Grant
1995 UIC- Teaching Assistantship
1991 C.A.A.P. Grant, Chicago Office of Fine Arts
1989 C.A.A.P. Grant, Chicago Office of Fine Arts

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hotchkiss, Sarah, Elise Ferguson’s June Room Stretches Its Stipes and Curves Beyond the Gallery’s Edge, KQED, June 25, 2019
Fisch, Taylor, Thoughts on Hard Edges, Columbia Journal, April 13, 2018
Hart, Joseph, Elise Ferguson, Deep Color Podcast, October, 2016
Porges, Maria, Review: Elise Ferguson: Citron at Romer Young Gallery, art ltd. Magazine, Jan/Feb 2017, V.11 No. 1
Hart, Joseph, Elise Ferguson, Deep Color, Episode 2, October 26, 2016
Butler, Sharon, Elise Ferguson: Courting Imperfection, Two Coats of Paint, October 14, 2016
Indrisek, Scott, Highlights from NADA New York, ArtInfo, May 5, 2016
Boucher, Brian, 11 Booths I Could Hardly Tear Myself Away From at NADA New York, ArtnetNews, May 6, 2016
Steadman, Ryan, Review: David Kennedy-Cutler & Elise Ferguson, ArtInfo Modern Painters, December, 2012
Wallace, Ryan, Default State Network Catalog, Land and Sea, 2010
Kellogg, Craig. Mansion in the Sky, Interior Design, September 1, 2009
Smith, Roberta. Review, New York Times, November 11, 2005
Smith, Roberta. Review, New York Times, July 13, 2004
Church, Amanda. Review, Art on Paper, September/October 2004
Gerber, Eric. Review, Sculpture, March 2004
Vander Weg, Kara. Review, Contemporary Magazine, Issue 57 2003
Weber, Christine. “Our Own Backyard”, The Queens Courier, May 21, 2003
Takahashi, Corey. “Burbs Barbs”, Newsday, May 4, 2003
Pratt, Kevin. Review, Artforum, September 2003
Smith, Dan. Review, Art Monthly, September 2003
Keegan, Matt. SUMMER KIT, published by Northway Press, 2003
Newhall, Edith. “Suburban Subversions”, New York Magazine, June 23, 2003
Smith, Roberta. “Impressions of the Yard”, New York Times, June 27, 2003
Brake, Alan G. “Message in a Bottle”, Interior Design, June 2003
Franklin, Melanie. “Curators Picks”, New Museum.org, May 2003
Hitzges, Jennifer. “Enchanted Evening”, New York Magazine, August 25, 2003
Johnson, Ken, “Art Guide”, New York Times, July 12, 2002
Cotter, Holland. “For Hikers Seeking Art”, New York Times, December 15, 2000
Hawkins, Margaret. “High Concept Flights”, Chicago Sun-Times, April 26, 1996
Porges, Timothy. “In With the Out Crowd”, Dialog, May 1996
Spiegler, Marc. “Loop Corporate Culture”, New City, March 2, 1994
Eng, Monica. “Floating Exhibit at the New Pier”, Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1993
Hart, Hugh. “Rolling Down the River”, Chicago Tribune, August 5, 1992
Valente, Judy. “Urban Waterways”, The Wall Street Journal, November 13, 1992
Voedisch, Lynn. Review, Chicago Sun-Times, August 7, 1992
Artner, Alan. “Floating World of Art”, Chicago Tribune, August 7, 1992