SHEILA HICKS: ODE TO ROY DAVIS        OCTOBER 17 - DECEMBER 23, 2015



The exhibition will consist of 13 minimes, or small weavings, created by SHEILA HICKS during 2014- 2015 in honor of Roy Davis, founder of Davis & Langdale Company, who died in October 2014 at the age of 91.

Concurrent with the Davis & Langdale exhibition, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., 530 West 22 Street, New York 10011, will present SHEILA HICKS’ reinterpretation of The Treaty of Chromatic Zones, 2015, a monumental bas-relief wall installation created for Art Basel Unlimited 2015. That show’s dates are October 22 – November 28.

Among HICKS’ recent museum exhibitions were those at the Hayward Gallery, London (Foray into Chromatic Zones); and the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (Baoli, a large scale installation). Presently she is the subject of exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis; and at the Louis Vuitton Foundation, Munich (Atterrissage). Her Pillar of Inquiry/Supple Column, was arguably the star of the 2014 Whitney Biennial and has since been acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Forthcoming shows include Threads of Life at the Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Nebraska; and a major retrospective at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, in 2017.

Read the New York Times review of this exhibition here.

​Read the ADAA review of this exhibition here.

Read TsAO & McKOWN's mention of the show here.

CATALOGUE PDF AVAILABLE HERE

SHEILA HICKS (b. 1934 in Hastings, Nebraska) received BFA (1957) and MFA (1959) degrees from the Yale School of Art where Josef Albers presided. Awarded a Fulbright scholarship to paint in Chile, she photographed indigenous weavers and archeological sites in the Andes. This, along with an extended trip to the volcanic region of Villarrica, the island of Chiloé, and Tierra del Fuego, continues to influence her work.

The first exhibition of HICKS’ painting was held at the Museo de Bellas Artes in Santiago, Chile (1958). Her first weaving exhibitions took place in the Galeria Antonio Souza, Mexico City (1961) and The Art Institute of Chicago (1963). Numerous solo shows followed: Bab Rouah National Gallery, Rabat, Morocco (1971), Stedelijk Museum (1974), Lunds Konsthall, Sweden (1978), Israel Museum, Jerusalem (1980), Seoul Art Center, Korea (1991), Uměleckoprůmyslové Museum, Prague (1992), and Bard Graduate Center Gallery Weaving as a Metaphor (2006). A major retrospective, Sheila Hicks: 50 Years, debuted at the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover (2010) and traveled to the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia and the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC. Other recent solo presentations include the exhibition Foray into Chromatic Zones, at the Hayward Gallery in London (2015) and a large-scale installation entitled Baôli in the Grande Rotonde at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2014-15). She will be the subject of upcoming solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2015), Louis Vuitton Foundation, Munich (2015), the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska (2016), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Puebla, Mexico (2016), and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2017).

Group exhibitions include the Thirtieth Bienal de Sao Paulo The Imminence of Poetics, 2012; the Whitney Biennial, 2014; Constellations at Tate Liverpool (2015-2017) and wow! Woven? Entering the (sub) Textiles at KM – Künstlerhaus, Halle für Kunst & Medien in Graz, Austria (2015). She will participate in the Sydney Biennial and the Glasgow Art Festival (2016) and the Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art, China (2017).

HICKS has created monumental bas-reliefs for the Ford Foundation headquarters and the Federal Courthouse in New York; the Duke Foundation in Charlotte, North Carolina; King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and the Institute for Advance Study in Princeton, New Jersey amongst others.

Her work is in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Tate Gallery, London; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Museo de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; Museum of Modern Art, the Jewish Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and the Pérez Art Museum, Miami. She holds Honorary Doctorates from the École nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris and the Rhode Island School of Design. Smithsonian Archives of American Art Medal (2010). Officier des Arts et des Lettres, France. She has resided and worked in Paris since 1964.

Electric blue vertical rectangluar weaving with three shells inserted horizontally
Sivad Needle
Cotton, linen, silk, bone, 11 11/16 x 5 3/8inches
Executed in 2015
DLA-6079

Chimera
Cotton, silk, shells, 9 ¾ x 5 1/4 inches
Executed in 2013
DLA-6070

Light brown rectangular weaving with six wrapped bundles at center, wrapped with magenta string
Grey strings in a vertical rectangle with criscrossing black, rust, purple, green, and blue strings and feathers
Enveloped Madness
Cotton, linen, paper, silk, 9 ¼ x 5 7/16 inches
Executed in 2014
DLA-6080

IM / SH
Wool, cotton, linen, feather, 9 3/8 x 5 7/16 inches 
Executed in 2014-2015
DLA-6068

Square weaving in blocks of brown and tan with two lomg porqupine quills inserted vertically
York / Kroy
Wool, 8 1/16 x 8 ¼ inches
Executed in 2015
DLA-6071

Rectangular weaving with crisscrossing sections of blue, red, pink, and orange
Dream of Lost Days
Linen, cotton, 8 13/16 x 5 11/16 inches
Executed in 2015
DLA-6072

Rectangular weaving with magenta, red, blue, amd yellow stripes with needle shaped bone near the top, inserted horizontally
Davis and Langdale art gallery
is very small. It can be hard to find.
Even though it is in the heart of Manhattan.
Only a few artworks can be shown at a time.
Visitors drop in to this oasis
and tend to linger.

Two square, windowless rooms -
one above the other - are hung with
Roy and Cecily’s discoveries.
Nearby, in a dark corner, is a workshop
with rare frames and tools.

Narrow, steep stairs lead to
a quiet room -
a secluded viewing space
where works are propped up
above an archival filing cabinet
or displayed
on a heavy wooden easel.

Out the paned glass window
there is a Bloomsbury-type garden
lush with ivy, New Guinea impatiens, red maple.
Down a corner spiral staircase
an intimate study salon
brims with collectables;
bound books, framed drawings,
fishing lures, decorated cigar boxes, fountain pens,
paintings by Albert York.

Climbing to an upper floor,
two cats sit as sentries on delicate chairs.
An immense table hosts sculpted rarities.
Shelves overflow with objets d’art.
The walls are covered with treasures;
paintings by Lucian Freud, Gwen John…

Together, Roy Davis, originally a painter from Philadelphia,
and Cecily Langdale, a sensitive erudite scholar from New York,
have selected and exhibited art for decades
often placing it in coveted collections.
Last autumn time ran out for Roy.
Cecily pursued. She continues to fulfill their shared mission -
to wallow in the goodness of art.

SHEILA HICKS
September 2015

Yellow ochre weaving with shell at center, inserted horizontally
Listen Softly
Cotton, linen, silk, shell, 9 3/16 x 5 1/8 inches
Executed in 2015
DLA-6078

Long rectangular weaving with large orange block and two smaller red rectagnles at top and bottom
Copper Yore-Roar
 Wool, copper, cotton, 11 5/8 x 5 1/2 inches
 Executed in 2014
 DLA-6075

Weaving with blocks of tan, black and orange and center criss crossing with green, blue, and red coils
Corridors of Intrigue
Linen, silk, 9 ½ x 5 15/16 inches
Executed in 2014-15
DLA-6074

Dark yellow weaving with criss crossing magenta curvy lines
Emerging from Winter Ground 
Paper, silk, linen, grass, 9 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches
Executed in 2014
DLA-6073

Tan and yellow eaving with blocks of color and white and maroon sections
Struggle to Surface
Linen, wool, cotton, 9 ½ x 5 ½ inches
Executed in 2015
DLA-6076

Pink weaving with interwoven black, green, and yellow threads
CJZ   
Pineapple, linen, silk, cotton, 9 3/4 x 5 ½ inches
Executed in 2014
DLA-6077

Cour de Rohan
Cotton, linen, 8 1/8 x 11 7/8 inches
Executed in 2015
DLA-6079

Horizontal pink weaving with rectangles of lighter pink, yellow, and light blue
White weaving on tan paper
Prayer of the Nile
Linen, 9 1/8 x 5 1/2 inches
Executed in 2014
DLA-6083

Try Just Try
Copper and silver metallic fibers, 9 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches [irreg]
Executed in 2010
DLA-6082

Gold and silver irregular rectangle with purple stripe at bottom
Diamond weaving with pthalo green at left and black at right
Fly with Flair - no matter how!
Linen, 12 3/8 x 9 1/8 inches
Executed in 2010
DLA-6084

LAST DAYS TO VIEW
DAVIS & LANGDALE COMPANY, INC.
NEW YORK, NY 10021
212-838-0333