Set in Stone

David Zwirner is pleased to announce Set in Stone, an expansive group exhibition organized in collaboration with Galerie Kugel, the renowned Parisian gallery of pre-twentieth-century European fine art and antiques, and curated by Emma Kronman. On view at David Zwirner’s East 69th Street location in New York, this presentation will place a considered group of paintings and sculpture by contemporary artists from the gallery’s program in conversation with Galerie Kugel’s holdings of antique hardstone objects dating from classical antiquity through the nineteenth century. Inspired by some of the qualities that have influenced artists over history to work with stone, the exhibition will center on four themes that speak to process and appearance—luminosity, translucency, assemblage, and colorlessness—and will illustrate these complementary concerns through unexpected juxtapositions of medium and technique. While the works on view will range widely in how each artist makes use of light, color, texture, and scale, the presentation suggests insightful resonances among this diversity and demonstrates the continued relevance of such formal investigations. In pursuit of visual splendor and material complexity, these artists find a shared visual language that spans millennia, geography, and cultural contexts.