David Eichholtz
- Jun 21, 2021
- 6 min read

Press Release - Dan Namingha "Points Connecting: Land and Humanity" at David Richard Gallery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Installation View: Dan Namingha, Points Connecting: Land and Humanity

DAN NAMINGHA Points Connecting: Land and Humanity June 23 through July 16, 2021

David Richard Gallery, LLC 211 East 121 ST | New York, NY 10035 P: (212) 882-1705 www.davidrichardgallery.com

David Richard Gallery is pleased to present Points Connecting: Land and Humanity, an exhibition of new paintings by Native American artist Dan Namingha in his first solo exhibition with David Richard Gallery in New York. The presentation includes 18 contemporary acrylic paintings on stretched canvases mostly created in 2020 and 2021, except for 4 paintings created in 2019. The largest painting (from 2019) measures 60 x 120 inches, while the rest are more easel-sized and range from 54 x 60 inches to 16 x 12 inches in size. Ten paintings from Namingha’s series, Points Connecting, are very contemporary with a Modernist sensibility and read as non-objective geometric abstractions with a combination of rectilinear and curvilinear forms in black situated on creamy white grounds and several with additional shapes in yellow, blue, red-orange and light green hues. The remaining eight paintings are reductive, relatively geometric landscape paintings comprised of mesas, night skies and mountains inspired by and referencing locations in northern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico.

Dan Namingha’s exhibition, Points Connecting: Land and Humanity will be on view from June 23 through July 16, 2021 in the First Floor gallery at David Richard Gallery located at 211 East 121 Street, New York, NY 10035, Phone: 212-882-1705, email: info@DavidRichardGallery.com and website: davidRichardGallery.com. A digital exhibition catalog will be available along with images of the artworks, installation views and videos at the following link: https://www.davidrichardgallery.com/exhibit/542-dan-namingha.

About the Paintings of Dan Namingha:

Namingha’s artwork is rooted in the following three highly interrelated areas: 1) being born into the Tewa-Hopi tribes, taught and lives the Native American traditions; 2) his family and ancestors with their longstanding cultural and artistic importance and art historical recognition; and 3) his formal and informal artistic training with an emphasis on traditional methods and contemporary abstract art.

Spanning naturalism and more contemporary approaches to art marking, including influences of abstraction and minimalism, as well as exploring a variety of methods and media including oil and acrylic paints, collage, watercolors and drawing on paper and sculpture, Namingha has successfully explored and depicted the symbols (including simplifications and fragments thereof), stories and heritage of his Tewa-Hopi culture. Further, he has melded that iconography and the mythologies with his interest in the southwestern landscape, contemporary art and state of mankind. To that end, this selection of paintings in the current presentation contemplates something very interesting, the Hopi culture and concern regarding the effect of man’s actions, not only with respect to each other, but also the future impact on the land and mankind in general.

Namingha’s series of paintings in this presentation, Points Connecting relate to concepts that mankind is of the earth and ultimately, returns to the earth and therefore, all people—past, present and future—are interconnected one to the other and to the land (the “points connecting” one to the other) through the concept of the circle of life and cycle of the seasons. For quite some time, Namingha has been considering geometric shapes and permutations thereof to create "abstract minimalist shapes". In these paintings, each of the points of the abstract shapes and forms touch another element in the composition to create an interconnected network of shapes. More specifically, in these selections, the shapes were arranged in horizontal and vertical orientations to create non-representational images. The resulting connections of the shapes at various points created a “fragile equilibrium” within each composition, “as a metaphor for universal and interconnectedness”, in Namingha's words.

Hence, the reason why he sees the aesthetics of abstraction and geometry very much related to the minimalist and geometric interpretations of the clean-lined Arizona and New Mexico landscapes with their mesas, wide-open vistas and bottomless, cloudless skies. Plenty of geometry, negative space and open expanses of uninterrupted color to tie the diverse imagery together, not only aesthetically, but also metaphorically with cultural references.

In addition to symbols, color has a significant meaning in Hopi culture. Colors relate to the four directions: north, east, south and west, as well as the four seasons and moments of conception, birth, maturation and death among other aspects of the circle of life. The colors of yellow, white, red and blue are in Namingha’s series Points Connecting. The use of black is significant as it references the “above”, the Upper World or the Fourth World which is the world that Hopi live in today. Related, but not specifically represented in the painting in this presentation is the concept of the Fifth World, the ramifications in the future of man's decisions and choices today.

About Dan Namingha:

Dan Namingha, an accomplished and highly collected Hopi painter and sculptor, has artworks included in the permanent collections of more than 30 major museums (see below). He is a great-great-grandson of Nampeyo (1860-1942) on his mother’s side, who is considered to be the first internationally recognized Native American artist and often acknowledged for reviving the tradition of Hopi (Sikyátki Style) pottery. His mother, Dextra Quotskuyva Nampeyo (born September 7, 1928), Nampeyo’s great granddaughter, was the first Nampeyo potter to make commodity works for public sales.

Always artistically inclined and talented as a child, Namingha pursued art studies at University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, then the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and later at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Illinois.

Namingha was awarded the “Living Treasure Award” from the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2016; an “Honorary Doctorate” from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2009; and the “New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts” – Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1995, among numerous other awards. He was the subject of 2 PBS documentaries in 1985 and 1992, as well as national interviews in 1988 by Charlie Rose on CBS Night Watch and 1989, “The Art of Dan Namingha”, filmed for CBS Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt.

Namingha lives with his wife Francis who runs their family gallery and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Both of his sons, Arlo and Michael are also established and successful artists.

Selected Public and Private Collections that Own Namingha’s Artworks:

New Orleans Museum of Art

Museum of Northern Arizona

Georgia O’keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Cancer Research Center Albuquerque, New Mexico

The Booth Museum, Atlanta, Georgia

Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (MIAC), Santa Fe, New Mexico

Board of Governor’s of the Federal Reserve, Washington, DC

The Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Palm Springs Desert Museum, Palm Springs, California

Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey

British Royal Collection, London, England

De Young Museum, San Francisco, California

U.S Embassy in Chisinau

U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia

U.S. Embassy Port of Spain

U.S. Embassy Phon Penh

United States Embassy Caracas, Venezuela

Dahlem Museum, Berlin, Germany

The Gallery of East Slovakia, Kosice Czechoslovakia

Hallmark Collections and Archives, Kansas City, Missouri

The Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona

Intrawest Financial Corporation, Denver, Colorado

Millicent Rogers Museum Taos, New Mexico

Mountain Bell Collection, Albuquerque, New Mexico

Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, Arizona

The Naprstkovo Museum, Prague, Czechoslovakia

NASA Art Collection, Washington, DC

Native American Center for the Living Arts, New York

Opto 22 Corporation, Huntington Beach, California

Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Arizona Bank Collection, Phoenix, Arizona

City of Phoenix Collection, Sky Harbor International Airport, Phoenix, Arizona

City of Scottsdale Fine arts Collection, Scottsdale , Arizona

U.S. Department of the Interior Indian Arts Collections, Washington, DC

United States Embassy, Brasilia, Brazil

United States Embassy, Copenhagen, Denmark

United States Embassy, Dakar, Senegal

United States Embassy, La Paz, Bolivia

United States Embassy, Cotonou, Africa

United States Embassy, Geneva, Switzerland

State Capitol, Santa Fe, New Mexico

Sundance Institute, Utah

The Reading Museum, Reading Pennsylvania

Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado

About David Richard Gallery:

Since its inception in 2010, David Richard Gallery has produced museum quality exhibitions that feature Post War abstraction in the US. The presentations have addressed specific decades and geographies as well as certain movements and tendencies. While the gallery has long been recognized as an important proponent of post-1960s abstraction—including both the influential pioneers as well as a younger generation of practitioners in this field—in keeping with this spirit of nurture and development the gallery also presents established artists who embrace more gestural and representational approaches to the making of art as well as young emerging artists.

In 2015 David Richard Gallery launched DR Art Projects to provide a platform for artists of all stripes—international, national, local, emerging and established—to present special solo projects or to participate in unique collaborations or thematic exhibitions. The goal is to offer a fresh look at contemporary art practice from a broad spectrum of artists and presentations. The Gallery opened its current location in New York in 2017.

For additional information please contact: David Eichholtz, Manager Mobile: 917-853-8161 D@DavidRichardGallery.com David Richard Gallery, LLC 211 East 121st ST., New York, NY 10035 P: 212-882-1705 www.DavidRichardGallery.com