
IMAGE: Nicole Eisenman, Procession, 2019–2020. Installation view, Nicole Eisenman: Sturm und Drang, The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2020. Artwork © Nicole Eisenman. Courtesy the artist; Vielmetter Los Angeles; and Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Image courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Colin Doyle.
On view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue and sculpture upcoming at The Contemporary Austin – Laguna Gloria
As the winner of the 2020 Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize, New York-based artist Nicole Eisenman presents a solo exhibition at The Contemporary Austin’s downtown venue, the Jones Center on Congress Avenue, with an outdoor sculpture also to be installed at the museum’s fourteen-acre sculpture park at Laguna Gloria. Encompassing a wide range of media including drawing, painting, and sculpture, this exhibition focuses on the artist’s anti-monumental and enigmatic three-dimensional work, and will be accompanied by a full-color catalog. A related exhibition will travel to The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, on view December 12, 2020 – March 13, 2021.
Eisenman’s practice blends the influence of Western art history and figuration with activism, sexuality, queer humor, and emotional rawness to create profoundly unique works. Eisenman emerged in the early 1990s in New York City as a painter, and the bulk of her creative output for nearly three decades has been in the form of two-dimensional work including paintings, drawings, and occasionally collages and photographs. More recently, the artist has begun making three-dimensional, figurative work: indoor and outdoor sculptures that both reference and depart from conventional forms and narratives, often combined in allegorical multiples or compositions akin to those in her paintings.
Eisenman was selected for the prize by an independent advisory committee composed of renowned curators and art historians from across the US, led by Heather Pesanti, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs at The Contemporary Austin. The advisory committee for the 2020 prize included Ian Berry, Dayton Director of The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery and Professor of Liberal Arts at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY; Lauren Haynes, Curator, Contemporary Art at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Eungie Joo, Curator of Contemporary Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; Helen Molesworth, critic; and Lilian Tone, Assistant Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; along with institutional advisor Stephanie Roach, Director of The FLAG Art Foundation.
ABOUT ARTIST NICOLE EISENMAN
Nicole Eisenman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is a MacArthur Foundation fellow and was nominated into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. A solo exhibition of her work premiered at the Staatliche Kunsthalle in Baden-Baden, Germany, in fall 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include Dark Light, Vielmetter Los Angeles; Dark Light, Secession, Vienna, Austria; Al-ugh-ories, New Museum, New York; and Magnificent Delusion, Anton Kern Gallery, New York. Having established herself as a painter, Eisenman has, for the last six years, expanded her practice into the third dimension. This will be the artist’s first exhibition in Austin, and first solo museum show in Texas.
This exhibition is funded by Suzanne Deal Booth and The FLAG Art Foundation, with additional support from the Edward and Betty Marcus Foundation, Hauser & Wirth, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and Anton Kern Gallery.
The Suzanne Deal Booth Art Prize, founded by The Contemporary Austin trustee Suzanne Deal Booth and administered by The Contemporary Austin, was announced in summer 2016 as an unrestricted award to be given every two years to an artist selected by a rotating, independent advisory committee made up of renowned curators and art historians of contemporary art. In fall 2016 the inaugural prize, which included a $100,000 award to an artist, along with a solo exhibition, an accompanying publication, and related public programming at The Contemporary Austin, was awarded to artist Rodney McMillian, whose exhibition Against a Civic Death was on view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue from February 1 – August 26, 2018.
In May 2018, The Contemporary Austin and The FLAG Art Foundation announced the expansion and renaming of the award to the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize. This prize includes a $200,000 award to an artist, along with all production expenses for a solo exhibition premiering in Austin and traveling to The FLAG Art Foundation in New York, an accompanying scholarly publication, and related public programming. The mission of the inaugural prize remains the same: each winning artist is selected based on his or her outstanding merit and strong record of international museum and gallery exhibitions and is an individual whom the advisory committee deems deserving of increased recognition, and for whom the award and exhibition would be transformative.
Emerging from Suzanne Deal Booth’s initial vision for the art prize she launched with The Contemporary Austin in 2016, the Suzanne Deal Booth / FLAG Art Foundation Prize has doubled in monetary value thanks to the generous support of The FLAG Art Foundation, becoming one of the largest awards presented to an artist and one of the most ambitious art prizes globally. Learn more about the 2020 prize here.