Downbeat

Marian Goodman Gallery is pleased to announce Downbeat, an exhibition about Denniston Hill, the artist residency founded by artists Julie Mehretu and Paul Pfeiffer and architect Lawrence Chua.

Downbeat takes its title from Denniston Hill’s concept of the “downbeat”: a rhythmic kind of time stretched out to make space for rest, reflection, research, and rejuvenation—essential components of the creative process. Artists exist under a constant pressure to produce. Artist studios are expected to operate like factories, many without the benefit of staff or distribution systems. The Denniston Hill “downbeat” is a counterbalance to this energy. It recognizes artists as whole human beings and nourishes all aspects of artistic production.

Downbeat brings together artworks that resonate with this particular temporality and demands for artist care by addressing alternative modes of being and perception, slowing down the perceived passage of time to intensify experience. 

 The exhibition welcomes viewers into a gathering space akin to Denniston Hill’s campus, where a multi-voiced chorus of artists is held together by an atmospheric ethos of “creleizure,” as Helio Oiticica termed “creative leisure time.” By syncopating socially conditioned notions of time with the more fluid and individualized (or entangled) pace required by creativity, the works presented share notions of rest and deceleration as essential components of artmaking.

Downbeat is curated by Guillermo Rodríguez, a 2022 Curatorial Research Fellow at Independent Curators International (ICI). Rodríguez’s fellowship centered on research for El Contrato Natural, an exhibition-as-ecosystem contrasting the University of Puerto Rico's botanical gardens with artworks that operate in symbiosis with the natural environment that hosts them.

About Denniston Hill 

Denniston Hill is a residency for artists and creative visionaries nestled inside 220 acres of land traditionally tended by the Esopus people of the Lenapehoking, now known as the southern Catskill mountains in Sullivan County, New York. Since 2004, our residencies have provided free room and board, private studios, a shared wood shop, a community garden, connections to local artists and farmers, and tools for communal living to over 200 artists from around the world. We pay residents a small stipend to help cover the costs of everyday life, and we cover roundtrip travel to our campus. Most importantly, Denniston Hill provides a sanctuary where artists can reconnect with nature, commune with each other, breathe deeply, and just BE.

About the Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Fellowship

ICI’s Curatorial Research Fellowships reflect the organization’s commitment to the advancement of new knowledge and practices. The program supports curators’ research, travel, and the development of their professional networks, promoting experimentation, collaboration, and international engagement in the field. Expanded in 2021 with the support of the Marian Goodman Gallery Initiative in honor of the late Okwui Enwezor, the program aims to strengthen and expand educational and research opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) curators, empowering and sustaining a more diverse generation of creative professionals and forging international collaborative networks.

Tour of Downbeat

Photos of installation: Alex Yudzon