Linsen Chai

The first exhibition dedicated to the work and careers of Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock, Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous gathers 120 works from 80 lenders spaced throughout 12000 sqft. of gallery space. The exhibition design subtly references certain historical conditions of viewing while creating spatial environments and relationships that foreground the artists’ intertwined personal and professional histories

In its opening section, three galleries evoke the domestic scale and intimate atmosphere of the Midtown Manhattan brownstones that were home to the kind of spaces where both artists were first exhibited with bespoke architectural detailing and warm lighting. The exhibition then expands in its central gallery presenting Pollock’s and Krasner’s work in a dramatically different setting as the scale of their works and careers grows. Drawing inspiration from The Ideal Museum for the Paintings of Jackson Pollock, an unrealized project developed by friend and architect Peter Blake in 1949, it echoes those high modernist ideals which envisioned paintings and mirrors arranged in an open-air setting at their property in Springs, NY. Conversely, both artist’s first large-scale showcases were presented at the Whitechapel Gallery in London amidst vast expanses of lofted galleries. Drawing upon these precedents and taking advantage of the gallery's twenty-foot ceilings, Past Continuous presents their works on large freestanding steel structures where visitors encounter them gradually and from multiple angles, illuminated in part by natural daylight, as environments rather than static paintings. The exhibition’s final galleries reflect the emergence of the “institutional” display model that became dominant in the twentieth century or the ubiquitous “white cube”. Her largest paintings have walls unto themselves, encouraging focused contemplation and emphasizing the scale and ambition of her later work.

The exhibition and its design came under much acclaim, reviewed by the New York Times as a “knockout show” with a dedicated mention to its architecture. Hyperallergic called it “by any reckoning one of the most gorgeously designed and ingeniously installed exhibitions in the museum’s history.” The New Yorker frames it as “the best painting show in America this year” with a “smart exhibition design.”