GARY KUEHN - throw nothing into the sea
GARY KUEHN
throw nothing into the sea
july 25 - august 10 2026
opening reception: saturday, july 25, 6-8pm
artist talk with rj supa: thursday, july 30, 6pm
Farm Projects is pleased to present Throw Nothing Into The Sea, a solo exhibition of work by American artist Gary Kuehn, who pioneered the Process Art and Post-Minimalism movements of the 1960s. The work in the exhibition was made across six decades of practice, and brings together paintings, works on paper, and sculpture.
Early in his career, Kuehn’s work, using chance procedures to dictate human and material interactions, contributed to a generation of artists interested in expanding the definition of both sculpture and painting. He participated in Eccentric Abstraction (1966, curated by Lucy Lippard) and When Attitudes Become Form (1969, curated by Harald Szeemann), two exhibitions that remain landmarks of the period.
The title of the exhibition, Throw Nothing Into The Sea, suggests both restraint and accumulation, alluding to the binary forces Kuehn work contends with. The exhibition includes selections from Kuehn’s Black Paintings from 2001 to 2016 alongside a recent series of colorful graphite and enamel drawings on panel. Twist Piece (1986), one of the early works on view, is a curved, black steel bar more than five feet long. Together with a selection of drawings from the 60s and 70s, these works anchor the exhibition in Kuehn's sustained exploration of form.
While Kuehn currently lives in New York and shows widely in Europe, he has deep roots on Cape Cod. For decades, he has returned to Wellfleet each year, where he stays in a home on the pond owned by a German mathematician with his wife, author Suzanne McConnell. His time in Wellfleet has had a direct influence on his work, and it is where many of his recent graphite and enamel works were created.
About the Artist Gary Kuehn was born in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1939. He received a BFA from Drew University (1962) and an MFA from Rutgers University (1964), where he later served as Distinguished Professor of Art, Emeritus, teaching for forty years. He has held teaching positions at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Braunschweig, Germany. Kuehn's work has been the subject of major institutional surveys including Between Sex and Geometry (Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2014) and Practitioner's Delight (GAMeC – Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art of Bergamo, 2018). He is the recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Award (1976), the DAAD Fellowship, Berlin (1978–79), and the Francis J. Greenburger Award (1992). He lives and works in New York, NY; Glen Gardner, NJ; and Wellfleet, MA.