Exhibitions - Profound Approach and Easy Outcome

Anna K.E.
Profound Approach and Easy Outcome

04.09.17 – 02.25.18

On a white exhibition wall is a photograph of a white woman with short, brown, curly hair, wearing a black dress who is holding up a piece of paper in one hand. She is mimicking a painted portrait of man holding the same pose. To the right of the photograph is a mosaic patterned sheet of paper made up of tiny, multi-colored squares. The paper is in an abstract shape and has some of its squares missing.

Image: Anna K.E., Profound Approach and Easy Outcome, 2017 (detail). 140ft x 27 ft. Courtesy the artist. Photo by Hai Zhang.

Anna K.E’s Profound Approach and Easy Outcome will be the third iteration in a series of site-specific commissions by women artists on the Queens Museum’s Large Wall. Measuring 140 feet wide by 45 feet high, this architectural highlight forms a magnificent diagonal and is highly visible from outside in Flushing Meadows Corona Park through floor-to-ceiling windows, visually drawing park-goers inside and impacting their experience once they arrive. Taking maximum advantage of the spatial dynamics of this significant wall, Profound Approach and Easy Outcome performs a complex reflection on artistic production, feminism, power, and the role of institutions. Among five visual elements affixed to the Wall, billboard-size photographic works will depict the artist in action in the galleries of the Metropolitan Museum, posing as the depicted characters in renowned master portraits by Otto Dix and Balthus. K. E.’s work considers her own role in art history, fusing the question of male-dominated canons with her comically intuitive and gestural responses.

 

Anna K.E. (b. 1986, Tbilisi, Georgia) studied at the Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Stuttgart and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Selected solo exhibitions have been held at the following venues: Sommer Gallery, Tel Aviv; Simone Subal Gallery, New York City; Barbara Thumm Gallery, Berlin; Mannheimer Kunstverein; Figge von Rosen Gallery, Cologne; Kunstverein Leverkusen; Interstate Projects, Brooklyn; and most recently Primary, Nottingham, and (with Florian Meisenberg) Signal, Brooklyn. She has participated in recent group shows at: Gagosian Gallery, Athens; The Renaissance Society, Chicago; The Kitchen, New York City; Moscow International Bienniale for Young Art; Württembergischer Kunstverein; and The High Line, New York City. K.E. currently lives and works in Queens, New York City.

Supporters

Exhibitions at the Queens Museum receive significant support from Ford Foundation and the Charina Endowment Fund. Major funding for the Queens Museum is generously provided by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, Lambent Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, The Kupferberg Foundation, and the Laurie M. Tisch Illumination Fund.
Commissions for the Large Wall Series at the Queens Museum are made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, The Ferriday Fund Charitable Trust, and The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation. Support for Profound Approach and Easy Outcome is provided by Deborah Goodman Davis and Gerald Davis, Dr. Ulrich Koestlin, Ignacio J. Lopez and Laura Guerra, and Jennifer Vorbach. Special thanks to Simone Subal Gallery, New York.