The Arts Club will install 54 of the 76 x 52 inch panels abutted and in random order. Shadows, 1978–1979, was created contemporary to Warhol’s series of Oxidations, and following his Skulls, and Hammer and Sickles, and before the Diamond Dust Shoes. Ronnie Cutrone, Warhol’s painting assistant at the time, said of Shadows’ inception:

Andy had a burning desire to do abstract art… and I said, “you’re Andy Warhol; you should paint something that is something, but it’s not… you should paint shadows. You love shadows anyway. They’re all in your work”… I had 150 shadow photographs on contact sheets twelve days later. We picked some of them out and then he asked me to mix the colors for them.

Two photographs were chosen to be silkscreened over the painted backgrounds. The impasto texture of some panels was achieved by applying the paint with a mop. The palette was chosen from Warhol’s favorite colors: “aubergine, chartreuse, carmine red, yellow, midnight blue… and white.”

Shadows was a singular work for Warhol, both in its nod to abstraction and in its scope. The installation of Shadows was used as a backdrop for a fashion editorial in the April 1979 issue of Warhol’s magazine, Interview. When questioned whether the paintings were art, Warhol self-depreciatingly answered, “No. You see, the opening party had disco. I guess that makes them disco décor.”

Andy Warhol studied pictorial design at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh. Following a successful career as a commercial illustrator in New York in the 1950s, he exhibited silkscreened paintings beginning in 1962, eventually becoming both a cultural icon and a major component of the Pop Art movement. He was not only known for his work, but he himself had an immense impact on the contemporary sociocultural milieu, from designing album covers for the band Velvet Underground and founding the magazine Interview, to creating films and overseeing his Factory and its infamous scene. Warhol’s work was exhibited widely throughout the world during his lifetime and after, and both he and his work continue to be a major force in contemporary art and culture.

Chris Ofili is one of the most acclaimed painters working today. His paintings and works on paper engage with history, the intersection between popular culture and high art, race, religion, society, and identity. As Chicago-based artist Kerry James Marshall says in his essay in the exhibition catalogue, “not only are [Ofili’s] pictures uncompromising in their highly stylized treatment of ‘Black’ figures, he is also relentless in his decorative and referential excesses.”

This exhibition is a continuation of the body of work Lin began in the 1998 Topologies and 2006-2009 Systematic Landscapes exhibitions. Lin’s interest in exploring notions of landscape and geologic phenomena are realized through large- and small-scale works that utilize the language of natural forms (wave, river, mountain, sea) and the systems for reading the landscape (model, grid, topographic rubbings/drawings) thereby ushering the experience of  nature into the space of art and architecture. Implementing the ways in which scientists and computers see the world – from sonar views of ocean floors to aerial and satellite images of land – Lin creates works that translate these technological views into sculptural forms. Whether through art, architecture, or monument, Lin seeks to illuminate our relationship with the natural world, predicated on the belief that a connection to nature is essential to our humanity.

The exhibition consists of eleven works from 2006-2010. Blue Lake Pass (2006) is a grid installation of 20 large particleboard blocks recreating the topography of the Rocky Mountain pass; Flow (2009) is an 11 x 35 foot installation mimicking the undulation of wave swells with 2 x 4 wood pieces. Caspian Sea (Bodies of Water series, 2006) is a three-dimensional birch plywood model of a sonar reading of the Caspian Sea. Rivers have been cast in their two-dimensional map shape, as in Colorado River (2008), or drawn on the wall with straight pins. Dew Point 15 and Dew Point 18 (2007) are oversized water droplets of hand-blown glass. All pieces were made with sustainable and recycled elements, further demonstrating Lin’s deep respect for, and love of, nature.