{"id":1970687,"date":"2026-06-03T17:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1970687"},"modified":"2026-06-03T17:48:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T14:48:12","slug":"how-gedi-sibony-makes-a-show-making-street-finds-into-frozen-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1970687","title":{"rendered":"How Gedi Sibony Makes a Show: Making Street Finds Into \u2018Frozen Moments\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0082_260526_Gedi-Sibony-Greene-Naftali-Photo-Christopher-Garcia-Valle.jpg?w=1024″]<\/p>\n

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\n\tThe latest show by Gedi Sibony continues the artist\u2019s practice of making enchanting assemblage sculptures out of the most minimal means, and of making paintings that rely on such restrained gestures that they\u2019re barely there. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe press release for \u201cThe Invisible Point,\u201d his eighth show at New York\u2019s Greene Naftali since 2008, consists of just four sentences, explaining that his process is \u201cpowered by an intuitive momentum,\u201d that the show includes \u201cobjects drafted from remnants and castoffs,\u201d and that landscapes depict \u201cinteracting beings.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd then it goes cosmic: \u201cThe extended space of objects and the imagined realm interact by offering confirmation across the divide,\u201d it concludes, \u201cgesturing toward the mystery that humbles us.\u201d The strength of Sibony\u2019s work is the way that he can make magic out of nothing materials\u2014including, in this case, wooden bookshelves found at trash dumps or on the street, broken plant stands, scraps of wire, and a broomstick\u2014thereby extending a tradition stretching from Cubist collage to assemblages by artists like Louise Nevelson, Robert Rauschenberg, and Richard Tuttle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI first got familiar with Sibony\u2019s work in 2012, when I wrote for Art in America <\/em>about the show \u201cIn the Still Epiphany,\u201d which he curated at the Pulitzer Foundation, in St. Louis, Missouri. Rather than just an artist-curated exhibition, the institution called it \u201ca large-scale, temporary work of art\u201d comprising objects from Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer\u2019s collection, ranging from Neolithic stone figures to a 1957 Philip Guston painting, often combined in unexpected, funny and profound ways. When I asked him whether there was a source for the show\u2019s title, he revealed that there was none:\u00a0 \u201cThe source? The amazing\u2026 mind\u2026 word\u2026 jumbling\u2026 process,\u201d he said, breaking into a high-pitched laugh.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of Gedi Sibony\u2019s show \u201cThe Invisible Point,\u201d at New York gallery Greene Naftali.<\/span>Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tSome of the artist\u2019s past outings at Greene Naftali have gone big, for example 2018\u2019s \u201cThe King and the Corpse,\u201d whose massive titular work consisted of \u201ca disposessed, prefabricated building,\u201d namely one that had had housed a White Castle franchise. Others have been far more understated, for example a 2013 show that Art in America<\/em>\u2019s editors (I was on staff then, so possibly me) described as offering \u201chis usual admixture of abjection and precision,\u201d with an \u201calchemy\u201d that combined things like thrift-store paintings into \u201cfrighteningly exact and seemingly cosmic ciphers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAn untitled 2014 show offered paintings\u2014of a sort. It consisted of large found metal panels from decommissioned semi trailers that had had their branding painted over, which the artist professed to show as found, though the finesse of the painting in some cases raised my doubts. Those works came in the wake of much debate about both zombie formalism, a term coined by critic-artist Walter Robinson, and provisional painting, coined by critic Raphael Rubinstein, but fit into neither category. Such work has earned Sibony a berth in in institutional collections worldwide, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Astrup Fearnley Museet, Oslo; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

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Installation view of Gedi Sibony\u2019s show \u201cThe Invisible Point\u201d at New York gallery Greene Naftali.<\/span>Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cThe sculptures have been generated in the studio over the last three years,\u201d said the artist during a recent visit; the lights were deliberately left off, letting the gallery\u2019s large north-facing windows provide muted light, lending a sense of quietude. Pointing to the six-and-a-half-foot sculpture Using Its Own Resources<\/em> (2024), he said, \u201cThese shelves were ripped out and had this paint pattern on the back, drippy paint on the unseen side that creates a kind of sparkly surface effect, a shivering border. I started looking for and collecting pre-built shelves that were being thrown away that I thought could have this nice treasure on the back if I ripped off the back piece of plywood or whatever.\u201d It\u2019s just like Sibony for ideas to stem from such slight phenomena.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis time around, Sibony acknowledged that the sculptures aren\u2019t all displayed exactly as found. Atop the main bookshelf in Using Its Own Resources<\/em>, with the detail of the paint on the usually unseen back side, he placed a smaller white bookshelf. But that one didn\u2019t have the same chance effect on the back, so, hilariously, he faked it and painted on the back side a central strip of brown, mimicking untreated wood. Elsewhere, in In the Quadrant of Primary Characteristics<\/em>, fist-size pieces of wood in assorted colors (painted by the artist) rest on bookshelves painted dark green (presented as found).<\/p>\n

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Gedi Sibony, Endowed with Inexhaustibility <\/em>(2025).<\/span>Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe arrangement of the sculptures, with titles like In the Quadrant of Primary Characteristics <\/em>(2023), Distributive Forms of Order <\/em>(2024), and Endowed with Inexhaustibility <\/em>(2025), roughly recreate the relationships that formed between the pieces in the artist\u2019s Brooklyn studio, he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven the world\u2019s endless number of objects, what characteristics make Sibony\u2019s finds sculpture-worthy?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf I were to try to guess,\u201d he said, \u201cI would say it has something to do with a distinctive expression, a human manifestation of something.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tOnce the sculptures were done, months ago, the artist could relax, and then he started painting. \u201cIt was winter, it was cold, and I didn\u2019t have to worry about the show, so I started making the paintings, just because I had this realization that I could make what I wanted to see. Tropical landscapes, that\u2019s where I wanted to be, so I just made it in front of me.\u201d The colors in the paintings echoed some of those in the sculptures, he pointed out, and he got the idea to combine the paintings and the sculptures. \u201cI thought, okay, putting them in a white room is simple, so what about the space that they could emerge from?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Gedi Sibony, Made of Jewels<\/em> (2026).<\/span>Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tHe didn\u2019t have such ambitious plans for the canvases at first. His goal was to reproduce Henri Matisse\u2019s Luxe, Calme, et Volupt\u00e9<\/em>(1904), which resides in the collection of Paris\u2019s Mus\u00e9e d\u2019Orsay, for his living room. \u201cI was making them for my apartment,\u201d he said, \u201cand then it got very involved.\u201d Involved as the process may have been, the paintings are minimal, with large expanses of white; Sibony has removed the figures from Matisse\u2019s original, and left, in some cases, just twinned versions of the sparse tree that stands at one edge, and just the slightest indication of a horizon line.<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than mixing paint, Sibony created the works, on which he has bestowed titles such as In a Quadrant with Shivered Outline<\/em>, Eternally Engendering Disparate Powers<\/em>, and From the Waves of a Honeyed Sea <\/em>(all 2026), one mark at a time with oil stick, with the canvases all lined up next to one another in the studio, working on all at the same time.<\/p>\n

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Gedi Sibony, Gathering Its Own Air<\/em> (2026).<\/span>Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali, New York.<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\t\u201cThis is the first time I discovered working that way, and then with practice I realized that I could get what I wanted to see more easily, so it very much rewarded a repetition, which I\u2019m sure every painter knows,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the experience of getting better at making your mark faster and practicing, practicing\u2014I like that process.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe recalled an event from his youth, when he and a number of other contestants simultaneously went up against a chess champion who rotated among them, making one move at a time against each opponent, until he mated every contestant. \u201cThat\u2019s what I felt like with all these little paintings. I was just moving fast with the oil, not really thinking about it, just, like, \u2018mate, mate, mate.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut then he corrected himself. \u201cIt\u2019s not really \u2018mate,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWhat it is, there\u2019s a point, if you\u2019re lucky, where all the marks work perfectly, and it\u2019s easy to go beyond that point. So actually it becomes about going fast, fast, fast, but also putting on the brakes. It can be a really fun process.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSibony pointed out that the visitor, coming down a long hallway from the elevator into the gallery, has a particular experience of one painting, framed by one particular sculpture. A visitor started to wonder aloud whether some of the sculptures themselves could take the role of visitors moving from one place to another.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSibony demurred.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo, it\u2019s very still, there\u2019s no \u2018from\u2019 or \u2018to,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cI think the stillness of it is the sense that it is, rather than it\u2019s coming from or going to\u2026 I mean, that\u2019s just what art lets you have\u2014this frozen moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGedi Sibony: The Invisible Point\u201d is on view at Greene Naftali, 508 West 26th Street, 8th floor, through June 20, 2026.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

[analyse_source url=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/artists\/how-gedi-sibony-makes-show-greene-naftali-1234787610\/”]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[analyse_image type=”featured” src=”https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0082_260526_Gedi-Sibony-Greene-Naftali-Photo-Christopher-Garcia-Valle.jpg?w=1024″] The latest show by Gedi Sibony continues the artist\u2019s practice of making enchanting assemblage sculptures out of the most minimal means, and of making paintings that rely on such restrained gestures that they\u2019re barely there. The press release for \u201cThe Invisible Point,\u201d his eighth show at New York\u2019s Greene Naftali since 2008, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,226],"class_list":["post-1970687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-artnews-com","tag-crawlmanager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1970687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1970687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1970687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1970687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1970687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}