No Forms

A group exhibition curated by Margot Norton

No Forms
Hill Art Foundation
May 12–July 15, 2022

My [artworks] have neither object nor space nor line nor anything—no forms. They are light, lightness, about merging, about formlessness, breaking down form. You wouldn’t think of form by the ocean.

—Agnes Martin, 1966

The Hill Art Foundation is pleased to announce No Forms, a group exhibition curated by Margot Norton, Allen and Lola Goldring Curator at the New Museum, New York. The exhibition brings together works across mediums by eighteen women and gender-nonconforming artists who grapple with the legacy of Minimalism, an artistic movement historically dominated by the voices of men. The title of the exhibition is taken from a quote by artist Agnes Martin, who was frequently referred to as a Minimalist, but never identified as one. While her works emphasize strategies associated with Minimalism such as geometry and repetition, they also embrace concepts of fluctuation and instability evidenced in the inherent imperfections of her hand-drawn lines.

No Forms combines important works from the Hill Collection with key loans. After identifying a core selection of artists from the Collection, many of whom are based in New York City, Norton invited additional voices to round out the grouping. A spirit of collegiality and dialogue animates the exhibition. Norton had previously collaborated with several of the included artists and consulted directly with many of them regarding the selection of their works in the show. No Forms is a direct outgrowth of these conversations.

The artists assembled consider the tension between form and formlessness and the inevitable glitches that arise in the attempt to create discrete, distinct objects. They operate within the cracks that result from such attempts, and exalt states of transformation and becoming. A complex materiality emerges from these works, which are often created in collaboration with natural substances such as stone and earth, as well as with manufactured ones, such as acoustic baffling felt and spray paint. In many pieces, the artists attempt to give form and pattern to that which is fleeting and ephemeral—air, sound, or movement—as they work between states of restraint and abandon, solidity and flux.

No Forms brings together works by artists across generations. It opens with two paintings by Agnes Martin, who serves as the central inspiration for the exhibition and an influence for many of the included artists. In the first room, Martin’s works are juxtaposed with pieces by Agnieszka Kurant and Michal Rovner, which engage with concepts of weightlessness, frequency, and motion through electromagnetic fields and LCD screens. In the main gallery, Tauba Auerbach, Sarah Crowner, N. Dash, Jennie C. Jones, and Dyani White Hawk play with and extend painterly strategies of monochromatism, texture, and repetition. Deeper into the Foundation space, Mika Tajima and Sam Moyer pivot to sculpture. Their works in glass and stone, respectively, explore ideas of holding, reciprocity, and entropy. Upstairs, Krista Clark presents drawings made specifically for this exhibition in which she cuts, threads, tears, and layers paper, creating palpable tension, and Maren Hassinger, Liz Glynn, and Ruby Sky Stiler consider themes of porousness and precarity in relationship to figures and vessels.

Rather than attempting a systematic reassessment of the legacy of Minimalism; No Forms operates as a proposition, highlighting multiple pathways that artists have charted through and against the movement of the 1960s and into the present.

Carmen Argote (b. 1981 Guadalajara, Mexico)
Tauba Auerbach (b. 1981 San Francisco, CA)
Krista Clark (b. 1975 Burlington, VT)
Sarah Crowner (b. 1974 Philadelphia, PA)
N. Dash (b. 1980 Miami Beach, FL)
Liz Glynn (b. 1981 Boston, MA)
Harmony Hammond (b. 1944 Chicago, IL)
Maren Hassinger (b. 1947 Los Angeles, CA)
Shirazeh Houshiary (b. 1955 Shiraz, Iran)
Jennie C. Jones (b. 1968 Cincinnati, OH)
Minjung Kim (b. 1962 Gwangju, Korea)
Agnieszka Kurant (b. 1978 Łódź, Poland)
Agnes Martin (b. 1912 Macklin, Canada; d. 2004 Taos, NM)
Sam Moyer (b. 1982 Chicago, IL)
Michal Rovner (b. 1957 Ramat Gan, Israel)
Ruby Sky Stiler (b. 1979 Portland, ME)
Mika Tajima (b. 1975 Los Angeles, CA)
Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota; b. 1976 Madison, WI)

Margot Norton is Allen and Lola Goldring Curator at the New Museum, New York. She is currently working on a survey exhibition with artists Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca to open at the New Museum in June 2022. She recently organized the 2021 New Museum Triennial, “Soft Water Hard Stone,” co-curated with Jamillah James. Norton joined the New Museum in 2011 and has curated and co-curated exhibitions with Carmen Argote, Diedrick Brackens, Pia Camil, Sarah Charlesworth, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Sarah Lucas, Chris Ofili, Goshka Macuga, Nathaniel Mellors, Laure Prouvost, Pipilotti Rist, Mika Rottenberg, and Kaari Upson; and group exhibitions “This End the Sun,” “The Keeper,” and “Here and Elsewhere,” among others. She also curated the Eighth Sequences Real Time Art Festival in Reykjavík, Iceland (2017), and the Georgian Pavilion at the 2019 Venice Biennale with artist Anna K.E. She has contributed to and edited numerous publications and exhibition catalogues, and regularly lectures on contemporary art and curating. She holds an MA in Curatorial Studies from Columbia University, New York.