What types of materials and techniques do artists use, and how do these decisions shape the subject, composition, and style of a work and its meaning? Pour, Tear, Carve explores the role methods and materials can play in evoking personal memories, conveying time and place, and stimulating the senses. Presenting 65 works from the permanent collection—spanning paintings, sculptures, photographs, drawings, prints, textiles, and mixed media, and including some works on view for the first time—this exhibition considers how artists have utilized historic and contemporary art materials to act as conduits of meaning.

Georges Braque incorporated sand into his still lifes to create spatial tensions, while Joan Mitchell poured and twisted paint over large canvases to suggest movement and a sense of place. Dindga McCannon and Sanford Biggers repurpose torn fabrics and textiles into extraordinary quilted objects. Simone Leigh carves terracotta to traverse links between the past and present. The experiments of Alfonso Ossorio, who affixed bones, jewelry, and mirror shards to panels, and Leo Villareal, who creates complex, rhythmic LED compositions, generated new definitions of art mediums. Pour, Tear, Carve underscores how the selection and manipulation of materials can enhance a viewer’s understanding of and dialogue with dynamic examples of modern and contemporary art.

The exhibition is organized by The Phillips Collection.

IMAGE: Dindga McCannon, Charlie Parker and Some of the Amazing Musicians He Influenced, Painting from 1983, mixed media quilt from 2010, 54 x 44 in., The Phillips Collection, Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2022