Nina Johnson announces In the Quarry, Anna Betbeze’s fourth solo exhibition at Nina Johnson and her first exhibition of entirely sculptural works. This new body of work explores themes of interiority and concealment—how they manifest physically and infrastructurally as well as their impact on the human condition. In the Quarry continues to examine many of the dialectical preoccupations that have predominated much of Betbeze’s practice: inside and outside, mystery and opacity, color and darkness, abjection and beauty, the hidden and the explicit, and clothing and architecture.
In the Quarry takes inspiration from Paul Klee’s 1913 ominous painting of the same name, which depicts a coal-mining extraction site through a spiky, jagged landscape. Around this time there was a proliferation of synthetic color that was developed as a byproduct of coal mining—the synthetic color that now suffuses today’s world. Betbeze was drawn to this particular work because her practice is driven by color, texture, and gesture, and it is equally driven by deep empathy for the human condition, which today faces an ever-more violent landscape.
This exhibition features two distinct bodies of work. The first are “stacks” or “condos,” which comprise found cardboard boxes that are covered in vibrantly colored hand-dyed silk and velvet. The richly saturated hues and varied textures are a sharp contrast to the second group of works, “veils,” which uses black velvet draped over metal and wood structures—essentially creating a veiled sculpture or interior.
Fusing history with the present and ends with beginnings, Betbeze’s new sculptures invite viewers to consider the complexities of our relationship to the environment, the beauty and the darkness that coexist within it, and the conflicting and enduring human impulse toward concealment and expression.
Anna Betbeze: In the Quarry is on view in the Upstairs Gallery through April 19th, 2025.
