In Search of the Miraculous

January 24 — March 11, 2023

Marlborough Gallery is delighted to announce In Search of the Miraculous, a group exhibition comprised of selected works by twenty-seven artists. This exhibition is the result of a two-year collaboration between artist Gerard Mossé and gallery director Sebastian Sarmiento. The project embraces the many sublime, delicate, and obsessive tendencies present in art that may be perceived as transcendent. The title echoes P.D. Ouspensky’s treatise from 1949 recounting his associations with G.I. Gurdjieff. The connectedness between the various ideas presented in this exhibition is not intellectually or historically explicit; it is by all accounts an unconventional, intuitive, exhibition that must be discovered through personal experience.

The endeavor began as a conversation about the subtle tones and light found in the work of Agnes Martin and Ad Reinhardt, whose works are included in the exhibition. It subsequently evolved to orchestrate a polyphony of voices from many generations, geographies, and approaches to art-making.

Among the works included: Giorgio Morandi’s deeply luminous compositions, Dorothea Rockburne’s monumental Egyptian painting, Denzil Hurley’s intuitive reductions, Bob Thompson’s allegorical celebrations of color and form, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe and Tomás Sánchez’s depictions of living nature, Yulia Pinkusevich’s meditations on her Siberian ancestry, a sonorous landscape by Charles Burchfield, an oil of early chrysanthemums by Piet Mondrian, Jacob El Hanani’s constellations of lines, an iridescent totem by Gisela Colón, a yarn painting by Huichol shaman José Benitez Sánchez, among others.

In the forthcoming exhibition catalogue Mossé writes:

Beyond their obvious stylistic differences what the present works have in common is their being made, over long periods of time, with skill, imagination, and depth of feeling. It is a process which relies on intuition for pointing the way and intellect and sensitivity to materials to reach, if not an ideal, something which might come close… Daily life disrupts and fragments our connection to our soul. Regardless of style, art reminds us of its essential, miraculous presence.

The Directors of Marlborough are very grateful to the artists and lenders who have dedicated their time, expertise, and works to this exhibition. An illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Gerard Mossé will be published to accompany the exhibition. 

Marlborough is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 10am until 6pm.

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Etel Adnan, James Biederman, Charles Burchfield, Gisela Colón, Beauford Delaney, Arthur Dove, Jacob El Hanani, Olafur Eliasson, Roland Flexner, Adolph Gottlieb, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Nancy Haynes, Carmen Herrera, Denzil Hurley, Yayoi Kusama, Ernest Mancoba, Agnes Martin, Piet Mondrian, Giorgio Morandi, Gerard Mossé, Yulia Pinkusevich, Richard Pousette-Dart, Ad Reinhardt, Dorothea Rockburne, Tomás Sánchez, José Benítez Sánchez, Bob Thompson