10.19.23 - 12.09.23

︎Exhibition checklist

12.26 is pleased to present Something to Do With Pleasure, a group show featuring new works by Claire Colette, Bea Fremderman, Hanna Hur, and Annabeth Marks. Inspired by the 2019 Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) exhibition With Pleasure, the gallery’s show echoes the sentiments of the influential Pattern and Decoration (P&D) movement in late 20th century America while also presenting a modern-day reinterpretation. Something To Do With Pleasure is a nuanced dialogue between the past and the present viewed through the lenses of four contemporary artists working today.

The Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s and 80s championed the marriage of figuration and abstraction and revered decorative traditions across the world such as textiles, wallpaper, mosaics, glassware, quilts, pattern, and architectural flourishes. Artists who engaged in P&D embraced decoration, pattern, aesthetics, and visual pleasure as a counter to the limiting aesthetics prevalent in the contemporary art scene of the time. They aspired to address the void created by minimalism and aimed to break free from the stringent formalist and conceptual tendencies that dominated the previous decade. The artists collectively emphasized pleasure and aesthetics, utilizing patterns and ornamental designs in their creations. This focus often led to perceptions of them being detached. However, their primary connection was with feminism, valuing its all-encompassing approach, its collaborative ethos, and its acknowledgment of women's contributions.

Similarly, the four artists in Something To Do With Pleasure build upon this legacy by expanding their palette both in themes and materials. Each artist, through various mediums, invites viewers to not only scan but to engage in an immersive exploration. Their works challenge the viewer to move beyond the traditional visual intake, urging them to experience art in its totality. The desire to create a "seamless experience of measured space" [1] resonates in their work, and thoughtfully aligns with the sentiments of the P&D artists.

Claire Colette (b. 1980, Reims, France, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) utilizes a refined geometric language that is both ritualistic and reflective of human beings’ innate biological urge to communicate. Colette’s paintings are meditations on the power of symbols and semiotics. Using her own visual iconography, she evokes possibility, safety and mystery. She received her MFA from Mills College, Oakland, CA (2013) and her BFA from the Art Institute, Los Angeles, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include: Micki Meng, San Francisco, CA (2023); Asia Art Center, Taipei, Taiwan (2022); 12.26, Dallas, TX (2022); Harper’s, Los Angeles and New York (2021 and 2020); Ochi Gallery, Ketchum, ID (2020); Ochi Projects, Los Angeles (2018), among others. Her work resides in the permanent collection of the de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.

Bea Fremderman (b. 1988, Kishinov, Moldova, lives and works in New York, NY) is a visual artist whose work combines segments of a capitalist reality as a reflection of daily life that has slipped away from society’s consciousness. Fremderman’s light sculptures are made up of collected discarded Depression-era glass from a bay on the Atlantic Ocean. The work is a link to place, and Dead Horse Bay signifies one example of an expanding landscape where our footprint contorts and is contorted by the environment. Through the re-presentation and re-creation of waste, the work visualizes human interconnection with disposable objects, the Earth, and our unknown future. Fremderman received her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2012. Past solo exhibition highlights include John Michael Kohler Arts Center Sheboygan, WI (2023) Prairie, Chicago (2021), Atlanta Contemporary (2019), Shoot the Lobster, New York.

Hanna Hur (b.1985, Toronto, lives and works in Los Angeles, CA) creates realms where the unanticipated takes form. Using the grid to wrestle with tangible matter and underlying convictions, she maps out an intermediate space, paving the path for astonishing resonances and waves from unforeseen origins. She received her MFA from UCLA in 2019. Recent exhibitions include: Kristina Kite, Los Angeles (2023) Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2021); Feuilleton, Los Angeles (2020);  Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2019). Her work resides in the permanent collection of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and MOCA, Los Angeles.

Annabeth Marks’ (b. 1986 in Rochester, NY, lives and works in New York and VT) highly inventive paintings are composed of cut and brightly painted canvas, organized into complex, intuitive arrangements that visualize the process of their construction. Woven, folded, and intricately layered hand-painted canvas panels are wrapped around, draped over, and bound to the stretched canvas, creating dimensional surfaces that often extend beyond the pictorial frame. Marks' debut institutional solo exhibition took place at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Sheboygan, WI (2021). Recent solo exhibitions include those held in Canada, NY (2022), Franz Kaka, Toronto, Ontario (2022), Fahrenheit Madrid Gallery, Spain (2020), and White Columns, NY (2017). She will have a forthcoming solo exhibition at Parker Gallery in 2024.

[1] Amy Goldin, “Patterns, Grid, and Painting,” Artforum (September 1975): 52.