On January 27, 2005 Betty Cuningham Gallery will open its first show of the paintings and works on paper by Abby Leigh. Leigh will be presenting a new body of work titled: Systems. The exhibition includes eight works on paper and five major paintings.
Leigh's work is concerned with a clinical look at the world and the self. Her paintings, each approximately 4 by 6 1/2 feet, depict a single, open oyster, resting upon the text of its own definition. Beneath the oyster's vulnerable, delicate skin, lies a self-sufficient system, a world in itself. Kathryn Tuma, associate curator at the Drawing Center, writes in the catalogue accompanying this show:
Leigh's art poses fundamental questions about the nature of our knowledge of the world: how do we construct knowledge about a thing like an oyster? What place does visual imagination have in relationship to linguistic definition in systems of scientific intelligence?
The works on paper, all titled "My Personal Atlas", are globe-like maps upon which images float like continents. The images, derived from early anatomical or botanical texts, are transposed into the handmade paper and coolly reveal Leigh's personal world. From embryos to spinal columns, the interior of self comes forward; from surgical procedures - mastectomies, tracheotomies, eye or tooth extractions - the process of digging further continues. Leigh recently stated:
My world is covered with skin - images revealed, images dissected, delicate systems thriving beneath the surface. In old anatomicals, skin is hooked like a translucent curtain over the landscape beyond. Bodies are cut up and presented like fruit on a buffet table. I cut into my interior world.
Abby Leigh works primarily in New York and has exhibited here as well as in Europe since the early 1970's. Some of her recent European venues include MidtsØnderjyllands Museum, Denmark; the Accademia dei Georgofili, Uffizi Galleries in Florence, Italy; and Galerie 14 Paris, France.
Providing a compliment to the exhibition at Betty Cuningham Gallery, My Personal Atlas, Works on Paper by Abby Leigh is on view at The Gallery Dieu Donné Papermill, Inc. (Dieu Donné is the paper foundry where Leigh makes her works on paper) 433 Broome Street, New York City, January 20 through February 26, 2005.
