JAMES SIENA
GLOBAL KEY

 2010 144 x 108 inches signed and numbered by the artist, Edition of 18 + 3 APs Hand dyed Tibetan wool

Full Image, Siena, James, Global Key, 2009, hand-knotted Tibetan wool, 150 knots per square inch, 144 x 108 inches.jpg

BravinLee editions is very pleased to present Global Key, the second hand-knotted rug designed by James Siena.
 
James Siena is a New York painter/printmaker who was for many years wore the label artist’s artist and was a well kept secret of the New York art world.  But in recent years Siena’s reputation has soared and his paintings and drawings are sought after by the most respected art collectors and museums in the world.  James Siena builds complex quirky geometries based on defined sets of instructions (algorithms) that amount to a kind of cowboy visual mathematics.  In the work Global Key, Siena follows the characteristics of a Fibonacci Sequence, in which the acute angles and lines progressively divide the composition.  As in the original painting, the rug maintains exact mathematical sequencing and proportion.  Our intention in Global Key was to preserve the characteristics that make James Siena’s work so singular and compelling.  Yet, we are pleased that there is a point at which the results rest in the hands of the weavers and the final product is collaborative and almost alchemistic.  The translation of Siena’s image by the weavers, the shift in scale, and the addition of materiality, provide the viewer with a new entry point to experience and enjoy Siena’s aesthetic. 

James-Siena[1].jpg

James Siena’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions at galleries including Gorney Bravin + Lee, Pierogi 2000, Daniel Weinberg in Los Angeles and Pace Gallery.  Siena was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2004.  The recipient of multiple honors and awards, Siena received an Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York (2000); the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Competition Award (1999); and The New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting (1994). Siena lectures and teaches at numerous institutions throughout the US, including the Cleveland Institute of Art, Ohio; San Francisco Art Institute; School of Visual Arts, New York; Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; and the Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond.  Siena completed an artist-in-residency program at Yaddo in 2004 and 2007, and recently was elected a Director of Yaddo. James Siena currently lives and works in New York City and the Berkshires.
 
James Siena’s work can be found in numerous public collections including the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Museum of Fine Art, Boston; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, Missouri; McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Philip Morris Collection, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

 

 

About the James Siena exhibition at Pace Gallery in 2006, Roberta Smith of the New York Times wrote:

Mr. Siena's paintings transcend painting to encroach on mathematics, puzzles, manuscript illumination and maps. They elude Western art to evoke Andean textiles, Chinese bronzes, African bark paintings, Persian screens, jewelry and glass-making and calligraphy. These disparate associations, more carefully isolated and combined in individual works than previously in Mr. Siena's art, make this savvy re-arrival the best show of his career.  (Roberta Smith, The New York Times, January 6, 2006)

 

detail1Siena, James, Global Key, 2009, hand-knotted Tibetan wool, 100 knots per square inch, 144 x 108 inches.jpg

BravinLee editions is a proud member of GoodWeave

GoodWeave’s founder Kailash Satyarthi was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in honor of his career dedicated to end the exploitation of children around the world.  GoodWeave, an international nonprofit organization geared toward abolishing child labor in the carpet industry, has liberated and educated thousands of children, bringing them from carpet looms to classrooms.  Satyarthi and GoodWeave work to guide consumers to its Child Labor Free Certified rugs and replicate their market-based approach of certification in other sectors. Kailash said at the ceremony, “I refuse to accept that the shackles of slavery can ever be stronger than the quest for freedom.” He asked those in attendance to place their hands over their hearts and “listen to the child inside.”