Ken Aptekar

Says Me. Says you?

January 26 to March 2, 2024

Tibor de Nagy Gallery is pleased to present Ken Aptekar Says Me. Says You? This is the artist's first exhibition with the gallery.

This exhibition will present 16 works on paper inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts. Enlisting social networking as a pictorial strategy, the artist brings illuminated manuscripts into the 21st century. Glowing screens on cellphones and tablets are the illuminated manuscripts of the digital age.

Aptekar began this series of works, at the onset of the global pandemic in 2020 while taking refuge in his house in Burgundy, France where numerous manuscripts were originally produced and are still housed in the region. As he and the world adjusted to new forms of living - isolation, increased screentime, and remote shopping, the artist found an affinity to an age when images and words converged into beautiful planes of color and writing. During lockdown, working with tiny brushes, calligraphy pens and gold leaf, Aptekar created his own scriptorium in a little village in the Morvan Forest. 

The artist has long used text and historical images in his work, however, with this new approach he conflates medieval with contemporary, and as he says, that he "stumbled into this rather neglected art form, my manuscripts reflected my intense desire to communicate something of our radically changed lives. Now I see how they allow me to give expression to melancholy subjects, political frustrations, and the lunacy of everyday life."

Born in Detroit in 1950, Ken Aptekar has shown his work in the US and internationally for over 45 years. He divides his time between New York and France. A major commissioned solo exhibition, Nachbarn (“Neighbors”), opened at the St. Annen Museum in Lübeck, Germany, in 2016. Previously, his work was seen in commissioned solo exhibitions at the Victoria & Albert Museum in collaboration with the Serpentine Gallery (London), Corcoran Museum (Washington, DC), Memorial Art Gallery (Rochester, NY), and the Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC). The exhibition Ken Aptekar: Painting Between the Lines, 1990-2000, organized by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, completed its tour in 2002.

Aptekar is the recipient of two NEA Fellowships in Painting, a Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation Award, a Rockefeller Bellagio Residency, Djerassi Resident Artist Program and Ucross residencies, and a Pollock-Krasner Award. Aptekar’s work is included in the collections of the Jewish Museum (NY), Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Kunsthalle St. Annen, (Lübeck, Germany), The Frost Museum (Miami, FL), Cleveland Museum of Art, National Museum of American Art, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (Kansas City, MO), Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX), Oregon Jewish Museum and Holocaust Study Center, Portland, OR, among other museums and public institutions.

Aptekar received his BFA at the University of Michigan, then moved to Brooklyn in 1973 to complete an MFA at Pratt Institute (1975).