AMY PLEASANT
Amy Pleasant’s work intuits the one and the many. The images delight in the tender articulations of the human body as individuated by gestures and slouches, tiny flaws and distinguishing marks. Pleasant maneuvers with ease between drawing, painting, ceramic sculpture, and installation; between small and large-scale compositions commanding equal visual attention and gravitas. Her minimalist compositions dissolve traditional barriers between figuration and abstraction, exploring the body as simplified, yet loaded, narrative gestures, full of implied humanity. Elbows, feet, touching toes, a gentle curve, all bodily expressions become linguistic ones, like letters generating the visual words of a poem. Parts of the body interact through repetition, emphasis, simplicity, and suggestion. Little memories of touch or familiarity emerge.
Amy Pleasant received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1994) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art (1999). Pleasant is a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow (2018) and received the South Arts Prize for the State of Alabama (2018). Other awards include a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award (2015), and Individual Artist Fellowships from the Cultural Alliance of Birmingham (2008) and the Alabama State Council on the Arts (2019/2003).
She has held solo exhibitions at the Hunter Museum of American Art, (Chattanooga, TN); Brackett Creek Editions (NYC), Geary Contemporary (NYC/Millerton), Laney Contemporary (Savannah, GA), Institute 193 (Lexington, KY); Jeff Bailey Gallery (NYC/Hudson); whitespace gallery (Atlanta, GA); Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (IN); Birmingham Museum of Art (AL); Atlanta Contemporary, (GA), among others.
Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions at venues such as Pamela Salisbury Gallery, (Hudson, NY); Knoxville Museum of Art (TN); Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw (GA); Brackett Creek Editions (Bozeman, MT); Hesse Flatow (NYC); SEPTEMBER (Hudson, NY); Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami, FL); Tif Sigfrids (Athens, GA); Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (AL); Adams and Ollman (Portland, OR); Lamar Dodd School of Art (Athens, GA).
Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Papers, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail and Sculpture. Amy Pleasant’s first monograph, The Messenger’s Mouth Was Heavy, was released in 2019, including essays by Daniel Fuller and Katie Geha, and was co-published by Institute 193 and Frank. Her work can be found in the collections of the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Knoxville Museum of Art , U.S. Embassy, Dubai, The Columbus Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, The Progressive Art Corporation, and The Cleveland Clinic, among others.
