Nancy Koenigsberg

May 30 - July 19, 2024

CHROMA

From May 30 through July 19, 2024, Nancy Hoffman Gallery will present Nancy Koenigsberg’s CHROMA (2023), her own version of a painter’s palate of color, which she worked on for over six months. This sculptural artwork of coated colored copper wire draws the viewer into a rainbow of colors. The work is comprised of four rows of small squares horizontally, and four rows vertically, occupying an area 26 inches square.

 Each individual square, in a color chosen by the artist, is created by knotting and manipulating coated copper wire and building up layers of the color to create a 2 ½-inch-deep object. The material is shiny and dull, fragile, and industrial strength. The colors create a grid not unrelated to her more subdued grids in grays and blacks. The various combinations and contrasts challenge and engage the viewer both visually and conceptually.

 Koenigsberg says the grid featured in much of her work reflects the city streets she knows so well and is a “part of her DNA” as a New Yorker. As the work employs the regularity and repetitiveness of the grid, it also includes the nuances and intricacies found in both urban and natural environments and in the textile world she’s been immersed in for decades.

 Koenigsberg has a rich history of study and work in textiles. She founded a custom design needlepoint business which thrived for many years in New York City. With a desire to focus more on her own work, she closed the business and became a student again, studying for three years at The New School for Social Research. Her studies were life-changing and set her on her present course. To ensure the continuation of an artistic exchange, she and fellow students began the Textile Study Group of New York in 1977, holding monthly meetings for lectures, presentations, and demonstrations. They invited artists from around the world whose work was well-known and well-regarded internationally to present their work. Occasionally, presentations of historical importance or technical expertise were invited ensuring group members of a broad range of knowledge from ancient to the most contemporary textile practices. Koenigsberg is today President Emerita and still deeply involved in the group’s ongoing programming.

Koenigsberg writes about her work:

“As I move ahead with my work, I reflect on my inspirations and beginnings. I’ve lived most of my life in an urban environment and find that the grid of New York City’s streets and the regularity and repetitiveness of the building facades has become part of my DNA. For those willing to look closely, the city also offers an endless array of distinguishing detail. Changing light is filtered through narrow shafts between buildings and through the leaves and branches of trees insistent enough to thrive here. Taxies, buses, crowds, and solo walkers, all contribute to the constant animation of the city.

“The grid and a variety of detail were also an important part of my early work with fiber, a first love that continues to engage me though I’ve moved from yarns to fabric to industrial materials.

“I now use copper and steel narrow gauge wire and traditional forms of weaving and knotting to create two and three-dimensional structures and textiles. Even as I create my drawings in metal, I’m fascinated with the interlocking lines and the spaces they form.

“Lace-like layers allow for transparency, the passage of light and the formation of shadows. In other works, multiple layers become almost opaque. Lines cross and re-cross to create complex fabric and a lively tangle of light and shadow. Works become a study in paradox offering an appearance of delicacy and fragility juxtaposed with the strengths of steel and copper employed in their making.”

About the Artist

Nancy Koenigsberg lives and works in New York City. She was born in Philadelphia in 1927. She has an extensive exhibition history in the United States, Europe, and South America, and has completed numerous commissions. Her work is included in collections in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Indianapolis Museum of Art, IN; Museum of Arts & Design, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; North Dakota Museum of Art, Grand Forks, ND; Racine Art Museum, Racine, WI; Textile Museum, Washington, DC; Yale University Art Museum, New Haven, CT, among others.