November 5, 2021 – January 22, 2022

Kerry Schuss Gallery
73 Leonard Street
New York, NY 10013

In collaboration with
Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects
401 Broadway, Suite 411
New York, NY 10013

Additional works by the artist can also be seen at Tonkonow Artworks by appointment

More information: Kerry Schuss Gallery

Kerry Schuss and Leslie Tonkonow are pleased to announce an exhibition of works by Helène Aylon that display the presence of reflective surfaces in works from the 1970s to the present and their spiritual, poetic, and political associations.

The central focus of the exhibition is a monumental multi-part piece entitled Mirror Covering (1987) that recalls the formal concerns of Minimalist sculpture while evoking the deeply held philosophical beliefs that underlie the diverse body of work produced throughout Aylon’s career.

Mirror Covering, measuring six and one half feet high by more than twenty-one feet long, is composed of eleven painted wooden structures, each one encasing a mirror that has been casually draped in layers of gauze. Engendered by the Jewish tradition in which mirrors are covered to suppress the ego during the initial mourning period, it commemorates the eleven million people lost in the Holocaust – not only the Jews, but also the Romani, Catholics, Gays, political dissidents, and others.

In describing the work herself, Aylon noted the “human scale” of the box-like elements, suggesting that they allude to windows or doorways into another realm. She chose to use gauze for both symbolic and aesthetic purposes; the bandage-like material referring to healing, and the loose structure of the material recalling drawing:
“I chose gauze because it has this crosshatched thread that looks like a line drawing. You know—it’s just horizontal and vertical … And so it makes a drawing … and I do think that this is going to unravel in time and that’s fine … I just see this kind of thread-like covering as something that could move with the wind, something that could be in the air and somehow breathe. So it’s almost like opening up a window and letting the air come in.”

Also on view are selected paintings from Elusive Silver (1969–73), Aylon’s first distinct series of process-driven artworks in which she introduced an evolving feminist consciousness to a medium that had been firmly dominated by the notion of a heroic, and almost exclusively American male idiom. Refraining from “mark making” (“I didn’t want to be hammered in by exactitudes”) she allowed the works themselves to inform the evolution of her ideas.

The paintings, made using industrial materials such as aluminum, Plexiglas and spray paint, strongly reflect and refract an inner glow that changes visually with the viewer’s stance and the light conditions. The perceptual changes inherent in these works anticipate her later series of the nineteen-seventies (Paintings That Change in Time and Pouring Formations) in which Aylon radically challenged established norms by creating works that were intended to physically change with the passage of time.
The exhibition also includes one of the artist’s more recent works, Tears for the Children (2016). Consisting of eight framed 12 x 12 inch mirrored squares onto which she applied clear acrylic droplets, the piece was originally featured in the multi-part, mixed media installation, Afterword: for the Children, an addendum and conclusion to The G-d Project: Nine Houses without Women (1990 –2016) her more than twenty-year feminist deconstruction of Judaic texts.

Helène Aylon was born in 1931 in Brooklyn, New York, and died in 2020 in New York City. Raised within a modern Orthodox Jewish community in Boro Park, Brooklyn, she was married to a rabbi at the age of eighteen and became widowed, with two young children, at the age of thirty. While in her mid-twenties, she enrolled at Brooklyn College, taking classes with Ad Reinhardt who became her friend and mentor. Reinhardt arranged for a studio visit with Mark Rothko, a transformative event for the young artist who, having entered the secular art world, felt free to share with Rothko the spiritual foundations of their common cultural backgrounds.

Her first solo exhibition took place in 1970 at the Max Hutchinson Gallery in Soho. Following a second solo show there in 1972, she was represented by the legendary art dealer Betty Parsons. Since then, Helène Aylon has participated in one-person and group shows in museums and galleries throughout the United States, Europe, and Israel. She has been the recipient of numerous honors and awards including, among many others, three awards from the Pollock Krasner Foundation, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Women’s Caucus for Art.

In 2018 Aylon joined Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects where a solo exhibition of works from the Elusive Silver series took place in 2019. Her most recent one-person show was presented by Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles in the winter of 2020, only months before Aylon died of Covid-19.

Works by the artist are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; the Rachofsky Collection, Dallas; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Weatherspoon Art Museum Greensboro, North Carolina; the American University Museum, Washington, D.C.; the Morgan Library and Museum, New York; and those of many other distinguished institutions and private individuals.

Kerry Schuss Gallery is located at 73 Leonard Street between Church Street and Broadway in Tribeca.

Selected works by the artist can be seen simultaneously, by appointment, at Leslie Tonkonow Artworks + Projects, 401 Broadway, Suite 411 at the corner of Walker Street and Broadway in Tribeca.

WFUV Interview
with George Bodarky
Part of a series Stories from the Pandemic

1.05.22 6:00am

We all have stories from the pandemic. What was the last fun event you attended before going into quarantine? Did you reconnect with an old friend on Zoom to pass the time? What went through your mind when you got your first vaccination?

Our guest this week has penned a book reflecting on her experiences during the pandemic, and she’s encouraging others to put their pandemic stories on paper too. Kate Walter’s new book is called Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter.

Hear Kate’s Interview at:https://wfuv.org/content/stories-pandemic

Kate Walter is the author of two memoirs: Behind the Mask: Living Alone in the Epicenter; and Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, AM-NY, Next Avenue, The Advocate, The Village Sun and many other outlets. She taught writing at CUNY and NYU for three decades.

Due to the current public health crisis and social distancing rules, donors MUST MAKE AN APPOINTMENT (walk-ins only if room capacity and appointment scheduling permits.)

TO SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT: click on link https://donate.nybc.org/donor/schedules/drive_schedule/300576
or, Use your cellphone’s camera to hover on the QR Code and enter Sponsor number 71021
or call 800-688-0900

Don’t forget to bring photo ID or NYBC donor card. Face covering is required before entering the blood drive. Eat well and drink plenty of fluids before donating.

All registered donors at the Blood Drive will be automatically entered into New York Blood Centers’ August Sweepstakes town a Mirror Home Gym with 1 Year Subscription.

For those that are ineligible to donate please understand you can be supportive by asking others to donate for you. The Need is Constant in All Communities and Every Donation Can Save Three Lives!

West Village Community Blood Drive at Westbeth Sponsored by The Westbeth Artists Residents Council

Do not donate if you have:

a fever or other symptoms of COVID-19 (cough, shortness of breath,
or difficulty breathing)
had close contact with someone diagnosed with or suspected of
having COVID-19 in the last 14 days
been diagnosed with or suspected of having COVID-19 until 14 days
after your illness has resolved
NOTE: close contact is defined by CDC as being within 6 feet of an
infected individual for a prolonged period of time

To learn more about the importance of donating during this time and to answer your questions regarding COVID-19, please visit www.nybc.org/coronavirus.

About New York Blood Center: Founded in 1964, New York Blood Center (NYBC) is a nonprofit organization
that is one of the largest independent, community-based blood centers in the world. NYBC, along with its
operating divisions Community Blood Center collect approximately 4,000
units of blood products each day and serve local communities of more than 75 million people.

NYBC and its operating divisions also provide a wide array of transfusion-related medical services to over
500 hospitals nationally, including Comprehensive Cell
Solutions, the National Center for Blood Group Genomics, the National Cord Blood Program, and the
Lindsley F. Kimball Research Institute, which — among other milestones — developed a practical screening
method for hepatitis B.
Our Region’s blood supply has never been lower.

A Light in the Water oil on canvas 52 x 56 inches

Water-Ether Art Exhibition
Etra Fine Art
6942 NE 4th Avenue
Miami, FLA

December 28, 2021 – February 19, 2022

I see a light in the water
And sprays of color all around.
Creatures swim by swiftly
Who can tell where they might go
In the blue and the purple.
-Beverly Brodsky

WATER-ETHER, in Miami is an exhibition of works by diverse artists, curated by Alicia Restrepo. Paintings and sculptures are represented within the context of Thales of Miletus and Aristotle’s definition of Earth, air, water, and fire, in addition to ether.
These Greek Philosophers believed that these elements strive toward their natural placement in the universe( which has a soul) and can change from one form into another. “Water, especially, “ is the nature, the Arche, the originating principal of everything.” Therefore, “the earth floats on Water.”