Gene Beery
Gene Beery
b. 1937, Racine, Wisconsin
d. 2023, Sutter Creek, California.
For over fifty years, Gene Beery developed a body of work consisting of paintings, photographs, videos, and artist’s books. From his earliest works in the 1960s, Beery’s text-based paintings satirically proclaim their own purpose, or position in the arc of art history, telegraphing artistic anxiety and art world absurdity. Beery arrived in New York in 1959. His first solo exhibition at Alexander Iolas Gallery was both prescient and overlooked, yet during his brief stint in New York he established lasting friendships with Sol LeWitt, Lucy Lippard and James Rosenquist. Beery left for California in 1963, eventually settling in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas and starting a family with his wife Florence at a property he playfully coined Logoscape Ranch. In California, he developed and expanded his text-based practice, enlivening his canvases with imagery and technicolor, while developing a personal vocabulary of neologisms, koans and puns. In the 1980s, Beery began creating artist’s books, funded by LeWitt, which simplified his aesthetic and informed the curtness of his late paintings: proclamations in black paint on blank, pre-stretched canvas. Since the turn of the millennium, his practice has become increasingly pervasive, his paintings and their ephemeral cardboard analogs peppering his property, along with impromptu sculptures that cement his longstanding Dadaist sensibility. This relentless production and permeation of work is what led Domenick Ammirati to state in Artforum that, despite never intersecting with its practitioners, Beery may have been the last living Fluxus artist.
EDUCATION
University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Layton School of Art, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Arts Student League, New York, New York
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
| 2024 | Gene Beery Memorial Exhibition, Cushion Works, San Francisco, CA Practice Quotidian Ecstasy, Derosia, New York, NY |
| 2022 | Portrait of the Artist as a Spandex Tuxedo, Parker Gallery, Los Angeles, CA |
| 2020 | Transmissions from Logoscape Ranch, organized by Nick Irvin and Jordan Stein, Bodega (Derosia), New York, NY |
| 2019 | New Mythic Visualizations, organized by Nick Irvin and Jordan Stein, Cushion Works, San Francisco, CA Gene Beery Retrospective, Kunsthalle Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland |
| 2017 | Wall Dancers, Shoot The Lobster, Los Angeles, CA |
| 2016 | Logoscapes / Visual Percussion, organized by Gregor Quack, Jan Kaps, Cologne, Germany |
| 2013 | Early Paintings / Later Photographs, Algus Greenspon, New York, NY |
| 2010 | Algus Greenspon, New York, NY |
| 2001 | sgnitniaP, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY |
| 1999 | Paintings, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY |
| 1980 | Matrix 55, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT |
| 1970 | Right Between the Eyes Art, Quay Gallery, San Francisco, CA |
| 1963 | Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York, NY |
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
| 2023 | Tell Me What You Want, Bel Ami, Los Angeles, CA Rules & Repetition, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT Dowsing, curated by Nick Irvin, Emanuel Layr, Vienna, Austria Anything can pass before the eyes of a person, Derosia, New York, NY Walk Against the Wind, Presented by Micki Meng and Parker Gallery, New York |
| 2022 | AOULIOULE, Musée régional d’art contemporain Occitanie, Serignan, France The Drawing Centre, Le Consortium, Dijon, France words as poetical weapons!, OV Project, Brussels, Belgium |
| 2021 | Stop Painting, curated by Peter Fischli, Fondazione Prada, Venice, Italy Paradis, Claude Balls Int, Maison R&C, Marseille, France Landscape, Bodega (Derosia), New York, NY Alphabetic Image, Arsenal Contemporary, New York, NY |
| 2020 | Ride Off Like a Cowboy Into Your Sunset, Aguirre, Mexico City, Mexico |
| 2018 | Under Erasure, Pierogi Gallery, New York, NY After Hours in a California Art Studio, Andrew Kreps, New York, NY |
| 2017 | FOTG, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY |
| 2016 | Drawing Dialogues, The Drawing Center, New York, NY Concept, Performance, Documentation, Language, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY The Product & The Post-product, Part 1, Kunstverein Wiesbaden, Germany |
| 2015 | The Silo, curated by Raphael Rubenstein, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, NY I Dropped the Lemon Tart, Lisa Cooley, New York, NY June, Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY |
| 2014 | Particular Pictures, The Suzanne Geiss Company, New York, NY Keeping a Close Eye on the Wind, Bodega (Derosia), New York, NY Keeping a Close Eye on the Wind, Freddy, Baltimore, MD Activities for a spare hour. Culture vultures. Feed your brain. Going in a group. Going solo. Mood. Chill, Organized by Bodega (Derosia), Queer Thoughts, Chicago, IL |
| 2013 | The Picnic: Adriana Lara & Gene Beery, Algus Greenspon, New York, NY Sol Lewitt as Collector. An Artist and his Artists, Museo d’ Arte Contemporanea Donna Regina, Naples, IT; Centre Pompidou-Metz, Paris, France |
| 2012 | Materializing “Six Years”: Lucy R. Lippard and the Emergence of Conceptual Art, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY Context Message, Zach Feuer, New York, NY |
| 2011 | Summer Salt, The Proposition, New York, NY Heads With Tails, organized by West St. Gallery at Harris Lieberman, New York, NY |
| 2010 | White Columns Annual, Curated by Bob Nickas, White Columns, New York, NY |
| 2008 | No Images of Man, Curated by Mitchell Algus, Gering & Lopez Gallery, New York, NY Never Work, Curated by Roger White, 191 Henry St, New York, NY |
| 2006 | Exquisite Corpse, Curated by Bob Nickas and Mitchell Algus, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY |
| 1999 | Red, Mitchell Algus Gallery, New York, NY |
| 1977 | La Mammelle Artspace, San Francisco, CA |
| 1975 | 1975 Biennial Exhibition, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY |
| 1973 | Drawing II, Quay Gallery, San Francisco, CA |
| 1970 | 955,000, curated by Lucy Lippard, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, Canada |
| 1969 | 557,087, curated by Lucy Lippard, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA Number 7, curated by Lucy Lippard, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, NY The Spirit of Comics, University of Pennsylvania Institute Contemporary Art (ICA), Philadelphia, PA |
| 1965 | 51st Wisconsin Painters and Sculptors Annual, Milwaukee Art Center, Milwaukee, WI |
| 1962 | Recent Painting USA: The Figure, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY |
AWARDS AND GRANTS
| 1994 | California State Fair Award of Excellence, Painting |
| 1983 | N.E.A. Artist's Books Grant |
| 1962 | William and Noma Copley Foundation |
| 1961 | Max Ernst Grant |
SELECTED PRESS
Art and the Hand as a Transmitter of Thinking, Terry R. Meyers, ArtReview, October 24, 2022
Gene Beery, Dominick Ammirati, Artforum, October 2020, Print
Missing Galleries Amid Covid-19? Check Out these Exhibitions Behind Closed Doors, Frieze, March 20, 2020
Gene Beery, Will Heinrich, New York Times, April 2, 2020, Print
Gene Beery at Cushion Works, Theadora Walsh, Artforum, December 2019
Gene Beery at Fri Art Kunsthalle, Kari Rittenbach , Artforum, September 2019
Gene Beery — why the cult American artist’s time has come, Melanie Gerlis, Financial Times, June 13, 2019
Life: 3 ½ Stars, Nick Irvin, Art in America, November 2016, Print
Review: Group exhibition organized by Bodega at Queer Thoughts, Amanda Roscoe Mayo, SFAQ, April 2014, Print
Early Paintings and Recents Photographs, Adèle Bossard, Curator’s Choice, April 2013
500 Words: Gene Beery, Frank Expósito, Artforum, April 5, 2013, Print
Interview with Gene Beery, Joshua Abelow, ART BLOG ART BLOG, March 2013
Gene Beery, Asher Penn, Sex Magazine, Summer 2013
Play Times, Charlie Finch, Artnet.com, October 17, 2011
Gene Beery, Kimberly Chou, Art in America, November 23, 2010
Gene Beery, Claire Barliant, The New Yorker, October 2010, Print
Gene Beery, Piper Marshall, Artforum, October 2010
Gene B. Beery, Raphael Rubinstein, The Silo, July 2010
Charley 05, Maurizio Cattelan, Massimiliano Gioni, Ali Subotnick, Deste Foundation, 2005, Print
Art in Review: Gene Beery, Ken Johnson, The New York Times, May 4, 2001, Print
Conceptual Art: Over, and Yet Everywhere, Roberta Smith, The New York Times, April 25, 1999, Print
All Things Considered, National Public Radio, 1985
I think therefore I art, Thomas McEvilley, Artforum, Summer 1985, Print
Art in the San Francisco Bay Area 1945-1980, Thomas Albright, University of California Press, 1980, Print
MATRIX 55, Andrea Miller-Keller, Wadsworth Atheneum Catalogue, 1979, Print
Six Years: The dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972, Lucy Lippard, University of California Press, 1973, Print
Drawings as Attitude, Cecile N. McCann, Artweek, September 1973, Print
Changing, Lucy Lippard, Dutton, 1971, Print
Eclipse of the Mood, Cecile N. McCann, Artweek, September 1970, Print
557,087: Seattle, Peter Plagens, Artforum, November 1969, Print
Catch ’63 So Far, Stuart Preston, The New York Times, April 7 1963, Print
Les Animaliers Stage Comeback, Stuart Preston, The New York Times, March 4, 1963, Print
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut
di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, California
New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas
Middlebury College Museum of Art, Middlebury, Vermont