Dana Sherwood’s paintings are riotous vegetal fantasies featuring beasts pregnant with human offspring. Some of her subjects we know well from mythology—swans and horses, others emerge from the artist’s imagination: snails, raccoons, octopi. William Corwin’s Artemis sculptures also meld the human with the bestial, but his figures are pock-marked and venous iron casts born of liquid metal formed on one-off sand molds. Both Sherwood and Corwin present their narratives within a framework that simultaneously heightens and embroiders the story: Sherwood coils wreathes of flowers and tendrils around the characters, immediately situating the action within a natural context—in sharp contrast Corwin builds a metal stage on which to present his alien goddesses—both artists seem intent on enshrining their hybrid beings. We may be seduced by the wreaths around Sherwood’s deer and rabbits, but whether these animals are parents of the beings within them, or prisons, or even have eaten their nude human inhabitants is up for discussion. Similarly, the game-like quality of Corwin’s shrine tables are inviting to the touch, but the bulbous serpentine quality of the hunter-goddess, known for her cruel streak, warns us away.
EXPO Chicago 2025 with Dana Sherwood and William Corwin
April 24 - April 27, 2025
Geary is pleased to announce an Exposure booth presentation showcasing the work of Dana Sherwood and William Corwin at EXPO CHICAGO 2025 from Thursday, April 24, 2025 – Sunday, April 27, 2025 in Booth #220.
William Corwin is a sculptor and writer who has shown his work widely in New York City and in Europe.
A graduate of Princeton University, where he studied architecture, Will has exhibited his work at LaMama Galleria, Zurcher Gallery, Geary Contemporary and The George and Jorgen Gallery in London. Residencies include: the State Department Artist Residency at the Taipei Artist’s Village (2007), The Clocktower Gallery (2010), The Hamburg City Guest Artist Residency (2010), Art Omi (2014), Lower Manhattan Workspace Residency on Governors Island (2014). Museum shows include Roots/Anchors in at The Newhouse Center for Contemporary Art at Snug Harbor, a four person show featuring the work of Shervone Neckles, Katie Holten, and Xaviera Simmons, with exhibition catalog essay by Lucy Lippard.
In 2019 he curated Postwar Women at The Art Students League, an exhibition of forty-four of the institution’s alumnae active between 1945 and 1965, featuring artists such as Lee Krasner, Lenita Manrey, Mavis Pusey, Perle Fine, Elizabeth Catlett, and Dorothy Dehner. He has also curated a series of exhibitions centering on the midcentury French painters Marguerite Louppe and Maurice Brianchon, at Lafayette College, Albright College, and Seton Hall University, and most recently this past spring and summer at Rosenberg & Co. He is the author of the book &Model, published by Leeds Metropolitan University, and is the editor of the upcoming book: Formal Concerns: Collected essays of Saul Ostrow, to be published by Elective Affinity Press in 2023. He was most recently included in three of Phong Bui’s exhibitions, Singing in Unison, in the summer of 2022.