JAMES SIENA

Miles McEnery Gallery is thrilled to announce an exhibition of new paintings by James Siena. The artist’s first solo exhibition at the gallery will open on 20 October at 525 West 22nd Street and remain on view through 26 November 2022. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated exhibition catalogue featuring an essay by Professor Robert Hobbs.

James Siena is celebrated for his inimitable process of creating intricate abstractions that have situated him firmly within the trajectory of contemporary American art. His practice is driven by self-imposed, often cryptic sets of rules that he—and various critics—have termed visual algorithms. Siena preemptively determines his marks and actions and repeats them procedurally as his works result in intensely concentrated, vibrantly colored, freehand compositions.

His oeuvre often references diagrams, complex puzzles, labyrinths, and mapping. Siena’s inward meditations actively engage traditions of pattern and mark-making in an ongoing exploration of scale, materiality, and interaction of color. Maneuvering across a diverse range of mediums, including painting, sculpture, drawing, lithography, etching and woodcuts, his work has placed him firmly within the canon of contemporary American art.

In the new larger works of the past few years, the process of emergence appears in the form of phased grids, whose cascade effects underpin the logic of the completed paintings. These works, like visual machines, elide conventional abstract strategies, and activate in the mind of the active viewer the ever-shifting nature of perception.

James Siena (b. 1957, Oceanside, CA) received his Bachelor of Fine Arts from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. For over two decades, the artist has taught at New York’s School of Visual Arts in the Masters of Fine Arts department. He is a board member of the Corporation of Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY; the National Academy of Design, New York, NY; and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. In 2021, Siena was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, New York, NY.

Siena’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Baronian Xippas, Brussels, Belgium; Dieu Donné, New York, NY; Galerie Xippas, Paris, France; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY;The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Pace Gallery, New York, NY; Pace Prints, New York, NY; Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn, NY;The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA; Ratio 3, San Francisco, CA; and the University Art Museum, University of Albany, New York, NY; among others.

The artist has participated in group exhibitions at the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY; The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Heckscher Museum of Art, Huntington, NY; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City, NY; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Whitney Musem of American Art, New York, NY; and elsewhere.

His work is in numerous institutional collections including the Hammer Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, CA; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,TX; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Gallery of Art,Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY.

The artist lives and works in New York, NY and Otis, MA.

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