EXHIBITIONS

Elana Herzog: Ripped, Tangled, and Frayed

Main Gallery
September 29, 2023–February 4, 2024

New York City-based artist Elana Herzog is a mixed media and installation artist who for over three decades, has explored growth and decay by deconstructing and reconstructing found, mass-produced textiles. She uses material culture to consider aspects of ephemerality, entropy, pleasure, and pain; focusing on the global migration of culture and technology as seen through the lens of textiles. 

 This exhibition and its related publication provide a much-needed, close examination of Herzog’s practice, since her most recent solo museum exhibition, accompanied by a publication, was held in 2009 at the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art in Sedalia, Missouri. This is also a timely opportunity to highlight artwork Herzog produced during and after her recent and highly coveted residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, MacDowell, and Fountainhead. 

On view in the Main Gallery, a 1,500-square-foot space with 17-foot-high ceilings, Elana Herzog: Ripped, Tangled, and Frayed features select early works by Herzog that reflect the breadth and depth of her innovative engagement with textiles. Highlights include iconic stapled and embedded works, recent textile wall pieces, and a site-specific installation. This exhibition also features a commissioned broadside that Herzog co-created with master papermaker Mina Takahashi and poet Brenda Coultas. A related scholarly publication examines the artist’s work in relationship to contemporary art, the history of textiles, and craft traditions. Contributors include Eva Diaz, Nancy Princenthal, and Jenni Sorkin. 

Herzog is releasing a limited edition box set as a companion to this exhibition. The edition is a collaborative broadside featuring a handmade-paper artwork by Herzog created in collaboration with master papermaker Mina Takahashi and incorporating poetry by Brenda Coultas. To learn more about this companion piece and to purchase one of the seven exclusive variants, click here. 

Artist Bio: 
Elana Herzog lives and works in New York City. She earned a BA from Bennington College and an MFA from Alfred University. She has held solo exhibitions at Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Diverseworks, Herbert F. Johnson Museum, Sharjah Art Museum, and Smack Mellon, among others. Her work has been exhibited nationally in group shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Everson Museum of Art, John Michael Kohler Arts Center, Museum of Arts and Design, David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center, Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum, and Weatherspoon Art Museum. In addition, she has participated in international group exhibitions at Gustavsberg Konsthall, Sweden; Mercer Union, Canada; Museums of Bergen, Norway; and the Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland. Her work is in private and public collections including the National Academy of Design. Herzog has participated in residencies at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, Dieu Donne Paper, Fountainhead, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace, MacDowell, Joan Mitchell Center, Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, Wave Hill, and Yaddo. She is the recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Saint Gaudens Memorial Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, among others.

Installation photo above by Etienne Frossard.