John Henderson, Illusion, 2021
Galerie Perrotin in Paris is pleased to host a new exhibition of works by American artist John Henderson, his sixth solo exhibition for this gallery and the second in Paris. Henderson continues to interrogate the practice of painting, performing the role of the Painter while approaching concerns about artistic production that extend beyond medium specificity.
John Henderson, Type, 2021
John Henderson, Return, 2021
John Henderson, Several Absences, 2021
John Henderson, Untitled (Memory Square), 2021
John Henderson, Interruptions, 2021
While the process of casting is often considered in relation to permanence – as the final move, which fixes an expression into place – Henderson’s exhibition utilizes the cast object as a point of departure. Casts of paintings (realized in metal, plaster, and epoxy) are alternately repainted, cut apart and reassembled with divergent materials. An oscillation between resemblance and difference plays out across the gallery’s four rooms as the surface’s of individual paintings appear more than once, reproduced and altered in multiple locations.
By returning to and revising seemingly terminal objects, the artist proposes an analogy between casting and photography, considering their shared engagement with indexicality, seriality, cropping and omission.
John Henderson, Recast (Stretched Yellow II), 2021
John Henderson, Recast (Retouched I), 2021
John Henderson, Floor, Wall, Ceiling (Return 1), 2021 / Floor, Wall, Ceiling (Figure), 2021
John Henderson, Floor, Wall, Opening, 2021
This cast metal painting is produced using a process known as electrotyping. Copper ions are slowly deposited through an electrolytic bath into a conductive mold taken from an original painting. Building up one layer at time, a copper reproduction of the entire canvas is created. The result, a metallic document of the painting, is almost sculptural, emphasizing the dimensionality not only of each brush stroke, but of the canvas and frame, too. The initial painting, itself a record of gesture on canvas, is then discarded, while the final copper object presents canvas, frame, and expression as a single and comprehensive object, readily identifiable with painting.
John Henderson, Spline (Counter Pose), 2021
John Henderson, Window, Grille, 2011/2020
John Henderson, Frottage, Hommage, 2021
Chicago-based artist John Henderson expands and develops an engagement with abstract painting and the conditions for its contemporary practice. Making use of a variety of technologies and techniques – molds, castings, digital printing, video, and photography – Henderson reforms, revises, and reproduces the manual painterly expression, invoking Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism while acknowledging a distance from their unmediated practice.
John Henderson has had solo exhibitions at venues including Galerie Perrotin New York, Hong Kong, and Paris; Proyectos Monclova, Mexico City; T293, Naples and Rome; Carl Kostyál, London; Peep-Hole, Milan; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. His work has been included in group exhibitions such as Per_forming a collection #3, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy; Anamericana, American Academy in Rome; Expanded Painting, Prague Biennale 6; and Phantom Limb: Approaches to Painting Today, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Henderson’s work is featured in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museo Madre, Naples; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
John Henderson / The Return
September 4 – October 9, 2021 / Perrotin, Paris
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