David Kordansky Gallery

Betty Woodman’s touring exhibition which began at the Stedelijk in 1996 also included another major work: “House of the South” (1994-1996). Measuring more than 13 feet high by more than 20 feet wide, this ambitious frieze evolved from Woodman’s “Balustrade Relief Vase” series begun earlier in the decade, here incorporating multiple three-dimensional vases atop ceramic shelves, surrounded by flat ceramic relief elements implying architecture, plants and other vessels.

‍In September of 1996, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam opened “Betty Woodman,” a major exhibition of the artist’s work and her largest in Europe at that point. The works on view included two installations—“Women at the Fountain” (1992) and “Conversations on the Shore” (1994)—in which Woodman for the first time combined free-standing vases on the floor with an array of wall-mounted vases and flat ceramic elements.

Read a review on "Betty Woodman: Conversations on the Shore, Works from the 1990s" by Jane L. Levere in The New York Times. The exhibition is currently on view through December 17 at David Kordansky Gallery, New York.

This major solo exhibition—the first of the artist’s work in New York in six years—brings together a group of ceramic sculptures from a critical and career-defining period in Woodman’s practice. Anchored by the installation “Conversations on the Shore” (1994)—which was last shown in the late 1990s as part of an exhibition tour which originated at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam—the works on view include a number of wall-mounted and free-standing sculptures, each engaged in a range of conversations about materials, history, function, architecture, sculpture and painting.