Elliott Puckette

Past and Present

September 26, 2024 - November 28, 2024

Stockholm

Carling Dalenson is pleased to announce “Past and Present”, our first exhibition with American artist Elliott Puckette.

American contemporary artist Elliott Puckette, is best known for her Minimalist compositions of wiry lines over monochromatic backgrounds. Born in 1967 in Lexington, KY, Elliott Puckette received her BFA from Cooper Union in New York in 1989. After graduating in 1989, Puckette had her first Gallery exhibition with Kasmin Gallery, and since then her work has been regularly exhibited in America and around the world.

The elegant simplicity of Puckette’s line belies its complex process. With brisk, confident gestures, the artist etches inlets into board washed with layers of gesso and ink. The colored washes create distinctive atmospheres in each work—brooding storm clouds of gray and tumultuous seas of dark purple. Puckette uses a razor blade to draw her arcs, carving out pathways instinctively with exquisite light touch. Later, she returns to deepen the furrows with cross-hatching—a labor-intensive process that inherently slows the line, subtracting it from the painting and delineating its negative space. 

Puckette’s committed and meticulous study of this particular formal strategy has been lifelong. Painting was considered in decline during her studies at Cooper Union, but Puckette stood by her minimalist logic, compelled by its potential. “It was always the line,” the artist has said, “I was completely compelled by the line from the get-go. It had more possibilities than form or shape or color.” This has remained Puckette’s primary visual staple since the occasion of her first exhibition at Paul Kasmin Gallery in 1993.

Puckette's work has been reviewed in numerous publications, including Art in America, Artforum, Art + Auction, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Elle Décor and Vogue. Her works are in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the New York Public Library, the Fogg Museum, and the Huntsville Museum of Art.

Elliott Puckette currently lives and works in New York, NY.