Allan Wexler : Probably True
Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo credit: Adam Reich
Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present Probably True, Allan Wexler’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery. For nearly fifty years, Wexler has created work informed by his architectural background and education. He produces functional absurdities that interrogate distinctions between human activity and the built environment. Wexler’s sculptures, drawings, and photographs represent subtle, unexpected spaces where interventions are fostered. The exhibition opened on January 17th and will run until - March 8th.
Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery
Utilizing pedagogy and the manipulation of materials, Wexler’s practice often draws on the conceptual spirit of the Fluxus movement, blending humor with intellectual rigor. By blurring the lines between the functional and the absurd, the practical and the philosophical, his work challenges us to reconsider our habits and rituals. In Wexler’s universe, everyday items such as chairs, coffee cups, or utensils become mediators of social interaction, re-constructed to connect and merge. In the sculptures Interchange, Extruded Dinnerware, and Light Table, the artist explores the ways in which ordinary, domestic objects act as catalysts for alternate modes of sitting, dining, or conversing.
Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo credit: Adam Reich
Wexler's work additionally reimagines objects drawn from nature. In Reframing Nature, a curved tree branch is straightened through the meticulous insertion of wood wedges, a human intervention in sculptural and photographical form. The exploration of the cyclical nature of objects and their meanings continues in Burnt Chair / Charcoal Drawing; a charred wooden chair, from which its charcoal is used to draw an image of the same chair on paper. This act of transformation, the chair becoming both object and medium, highlights Wexler’s practice as an exercise in recontextualization.
Installation view. Courtesy of the artist and Jane Lombard Gallery. Photo credit: Adam Reich
The exhibition introduces a new series of handworked images that blend elements of sculpture and photography to depict what the artist calls “landscape interventions. ” These two-dimensional works are fabricated scenes that challenge the realities of photography and drawing, incorporating recurring motifs found throughout Wexler’s work such as the cone structure, seen in both Speakers and Cones of Vision. Altogether, the works in Probably True capture Wexler’s ability to expose the conceptual world that informs our lived experiences, question the conditions of its construction, and purposefully turn it on its head.
About Allan Wexler
Allan Wexler (b. 1949) was an early member of the group of architects and artists who questioned the perceived divide between art and the design disciplines in the late 1960s. They called themselves Non-architects or Paper Architects. In 2017, Lars Müller published Absurd Thinking: Between Art and Design, a book on Wexler’s work and creative process. The book features projects developed across the artist’s career that mediate the gap between fine and applied art using the mediums of architecture, sculpture, photography, painting, and drawing.
Wexler earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts (1971) and his Bachelor of Architecture (1972) from RISD and his Master of Architecture from Pratt Institute (1976). He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2016), a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, and a winner of both a Chrysler Award for Design Innovation and the Henry J. Leir Prize from the Jewish Museum. He has executed and collaborated on public art commissions at several locations, including Hudson River Park at 29th Street (2006), Atlantic Terminal, Long Island Railroad (2009), and Pratt Institute (2008, 2012), among many others. Wexler has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at La Arsenale, Biennale Architettura, Venice, IT; The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, PA; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY; San Francisco Museum of Art, San Francisco, CA; Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen, GE; De Cordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA; The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; among many others. Wexler currently teaches at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn.
About Jane Lombard Gallery
Jane Lombard Gallery was founded in New York in 1995 as Lombard-Freid Projects. Currently located in TriBeCa, the gallery has maintained its commitment to the work of emerging, mid-career, and established contemporary artists working across media and disciplines. The gallery continues to showcase an international roster of artists who tend toward cultural commentary and the exploration of contemporary socio-political climates.
For more information about this exhibition at the Jane Lombard Gallery, please visit their website here. The gallery can also be found on Facebook and Instagram. The magazine conducted and interview with Allan which can be found here.
