In Tandem: Lynda Benglis & Sam Gilliam

media release: Lynda Benglis and Sam Gilliam, early practitioners at Tandem, are well known for their work toward redefining modernist abstraction. In the late 1960s Benglis, a feminist artist, created pours, acid-hued liquid rubber that congealed on floors or slumped in corners. Around the same time, Black artist and civil rights activist, Sam Gilliam, was developing his drape paintings, stained raw canvas suspended from the ceiling. These immersive works, like Benglis’s pours, depended on gravity as the architecture of the space determined the undulating shapes. From the margins of the art world, Benglis and Gilliam reconceived entirely the notion of painterly abstraction, rejecting the conventions of easel painting in favor of letting the world back in

The works on display continue the spirit of experimentation that is intrinsic to the work of these two artists. Benglis’s sand-cast glass sculptures, created during a visit to Madison in 1988 and exhibited for the first time, extend on her formless works from the 1960s, incorporating mesh and wire to create rough-hewn textures. Gilliam, Tandem Press’s first visiting artist in 1987, returned in 2008 to make his New Movie series, which combine translucent printed layers with decorative papers and wood veneer. Two of the earliest artists to work at Tandem, Benglis and Gilliam set the foundation for our continued commitment to collaboration in the form of the innovative and the unexpected.

Open House and Exhibition Reception: November 23, 10am-2pm

Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Friday, 10am-4pm and by appointment.

The exhibition is on view November 23, 2024 through February 28, 2025. Closed for the holidays on the following days: November 28-29 and December 24-January 1.