WHITNEY BEDFORD | 26 OCTOBER - 9 DECEMBER 2023 | Miles McEnery Gallery

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New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, ‘Whitney Bedford,’ 26 October - 9 December 2023
WHITNEY BEDFORD
Veduta (Munch Snow Falling on the Lane), 2023
Ink and oil on linen on panel
31 1/2 x 39 1/2 x 2 inches
80 x 100.3 x 5.1 cm
WHITNEY BEDFORD
Veduta (Picasso Landscape), 2023
Ink and oil on linen on panel
24 x 30 x 2 inches
61 x 76.2 x 5.1 cm
WHITNEY BEDFORD
Veduta (Amiet Baum in Abendsonne), 2023
Ink and oil on linen on panel
39 x 36 x 2 inches
99.1 x 91.4 x 5.1 cm

"'The historian,' a great thinker once said, 'measures the retraction of the world. With each step she takes, the past recedes a step further.' Whitney Bedford’s practice has become, before all else, a historical one. From a thicket of frenzied lines and a maelstrom of Day-Glo hues, Bedford conjures haunting, post-pastoral landscapes."

- Matthew Jeffrey Abrams in "Notes on the post-pastoral landscape"
WHITNEY BEDFORD
Veduta (Bonnard The Large Garden), 2023
Ink and oil on linen on panel
96 x 192 x 2 inches
243.8 x 487.7 x 5.1 cm
Veduta (Denis Legend), 2023
WHITNEY BEDFORD
Veduta (Denis Legend), 2023
Ink and oil on linen on panel
86 x 69 x 2 inches
218.4 x 175.3 x 5.1 cm
"Wealthy Europeans enjoying their Grand Tour wanted to remember the sights that they had seen, and a veduta satisfied that desire. Bedford keys into this tradition, but her vedute are not so mild-mannered. They represent a pivot from veduta esatta (an exact view) to something like veduta visionaria: from views of the world to views of visions of the world. Perhaps, then, it is no coincidence that so many of the works that Bedford has appropriated from Europe’s Great Masters depict their own visions—religious, ecstatic, delusional, or otherwise."

- Matthew Jeffrey Abrams in "Notes on the post-pastoral landscape"
- WHITNEY BEDFORD
  Veduta (Braque Paysage), 2023
  Ink and oil on linen on panel
  22 x 26 x 2 inches
  55.9 x 66 x 5.1 cm
- WHITNEY BEDFORD
  Veduta (Gestel Autumn Tree), 2023
  Ink and oil on linen on panel
  48 x 38 x 2 inches
  121.9 x 96.5 x 5.1 cm
Veduta (Picasso Landscape), 2023
"And so, like the arborist carefully driving an auger bit into a redwood, Bedford cores the past. This isn’t mining; it’s not about exploiting a resource. It’s more like a spinal tap into the backbone of art history; the point is to distill, diagnose, and heal."

- Matthew Jeffrey Abrams in "Notes on the post-pastoral landscape"
- WHITNEY BEDFORD
  Veduta (Sargent Broadway), 2023
  Ink and oil on linen on panel
  32 x 40 x 2 inches
  81.3 x 101.6 x 5.1 cm
- WHITNEY BEDFORD
  Veduta (Sluyters Forest Trail), 2023
  Ink and oil on linen on panel
  31 x 49 x 2 inches
  78.7 x 124.5 x 5.1 cm
WHITNEY BEDFORD
Veduta (Vallotton Pentheus), 2023
Ink and oil on linen on panel
37 x 56 x 2 inches
94 x 142.2 x 5.1 cm

"One might call Bedford an acid-rain romantic, only her landscapes are less odes than omens. The works remain romantic not because they idealize the earth but because they provoke the sublime—what matters is not each wasteland’s beauty but its ability to terrify. Spiritual upheaval becomes ecological dread. Bedford paints the madness of the age of humans, and madness is what she seeks to inspire."

- Matthew Jeffrey Abrams in "Notes on the post-pastoral landscape"
WHITNEY BEDFORD
Veduta (Van Gogh Sous-Bois), 2023
Ink and oil on linen on panel
28 x 37 x 2 inches
71.1 x 94 x 5.1 cm
Whitney Bedford Studio, Los Angeles, CA.

Whitney Bedford (b. 1976 in Baltimore, MD) received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI, and her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of California in Los Angeles, CA.

Bedford has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Vielmetter Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA; Starkwhite Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand; Art: Concept, Paris, France; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; and Taymour Grahne, New York, NY.

Her work has been included in group exhibitions at international institutions including the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, CA; Galerie de l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Quimper, France; Hotel de Ville, Pont-Aven, France; The Jewish Museum, New York, NY; Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI; Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; and Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom.

Her work is included in the collections of Eric Decelle, Brussels, Belgium; Pinault Collection, Paris, France; Ginette Moulin and Guillaume Houzé Contemporary Art Collection, Paris, France; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Jumex Collection, Mexico City, Mexico; Marciano Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH; Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz Collection, Miami, FL; Saatchi Gallery, London, United Kingdom; and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA, among others.

She is the recipient of awards including the Pollock Krasner Award; UCLA D’Arcy Hayman Award; UCLA Hammer Museum Drawing Biennial Winner; Fulbright Graduate Fellowship, Hochschule der Künste, Berlin, Germany; Karl-Hofer Gesellschaft Atelier, Künstlerwerkstatt Bahnhof Westend; and the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Studentship, Venice, Italy.

Bedford lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
- WHITNEY BEDFORD
  Veduta (Van Gogh Sous-Bois), 2023
  Ink and oil on linen on panel
  28 x 37 x 2 inches
  71.1 x 94 x 5.1 cm

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