Davidson Gallery is delighted to present Eve Biddle | Mary Ann Unger: Generation, a two-person exhibition by American artists Mary Ann Unger (b. 1945, New York; d. 1998, New York) and her daughter, Eve Biddle (b. 1982, New York).

Following Mary Ann Unger’s acclaimed first US retrospective at the Williams College Museum of Art, the exhibition at Davidson Gallery features a selection of works by both Unger and Biddle, marking the first comprehensive gallery presentation of Biddle’s work. While highlighting the artists’ distinctive practices in sculpture, drawing, and printmaking, Generation celebrates the creative and aesthetic dialogues that stemmed from their intimate and potent familial ties as mother and daughter.

In her large-scale sculptures, outdoor works, and intricate drawings, Unger coalesced the quest for the geometric and the organic, producing a constellation of linear forms and developed an investigation of the evolution of shapes. A graduate of Columbia University, Unger worked in New York from the late 1970s until her untimely death in 1998. An artist, writer, and curator, Unger treated the body, bones, and flesh as a matter of study, conveying the harmony, trauma, and the viscerality therein. The influences of Unger on Biddle’s practice are profound and ineluctable. Moving seamlessly between sculpture and printmaking, Biddle focuses on nature often highlighting process-making with visible handprints used as sculptural patterns. Exploring seriality and materiality, Biddle’s sculptures, and the subjects of her photographs resemble archeological artifacts that relay a personal account of the past and present.

Installed on the two gallery floors and the outdoor terrace, and with over 30 works spanning sculptures, prints, and works on paper – some of which were made near the end of Unger’s life and have never been exhibited before – Generation celebrates the shared language and the vocabularies common to both artists’ practices and is a tribute to generational traditions and creative processes. The exhibition is on view from January 12 through February 18, 2023, and is curated by Ylinka Barotto.

About the Artists

Eve Biddle is an artist and a co-founder of the Wassaic Project, an artist residency located in Wassaic, New York. With her co-founders, she has curated performances at MASS MoCA and participated in many public speaking engagements including at The Aldrich Museum, Art Omi, Bard College, Columbia University, Parsons School of Design, School of Visual Arts, and Storm King, amongst others. She lives and works between Wassaic and New York City.

Mary Ann Unger‘s work is included in numerous private and public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Her outdoor works are on permanent view at The Fields Sculpture Park at Art Omi, the Philip and Muriel Berman Sculpture Gardens at Lehigh University, and the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, among many other institutions. Unger’s works have been reviewed in publications including Art in America, Artforum, Frieze Magazine, The New York Times, and Sculpture Magazine.

About the Curator

Ylinka Barotto is a curator and art professional who has previously worked at the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. At the Moody, she organized exhibitions and performances with national and international artists notably: Li E. Harris; Jasmine Hearn; Baseera Khan; Kapwani Kiwanga; Sondra Perry; Kameelah Janan Rasheed; Edra Soto; Clarissa Tossin, and Charisse Pearlina Weston amongst others. Barotto was also involved in the expansion of Rice Public Art through acquisitions and commissions. At the Guggenheim, Barotto worked on modern and postwar retrospectives as well as contemporary exhibitions and contributed to shaping and diversifying the Guggenheim’s permanent collection through acquisitions of emerging artists.