James Cohan is pleased to present Mother Lode: Material and Memory, organized by Abigail Ross Goodman, Molly Epstein, and Ellen Langan, on view from June 21 through July 26, 2024, at 48 and 52 Walker Street. The gallery will host an opening reception on Friday, June 21 from 6-8 PM.

“Mother lode” is a term used to indicate the primary vein of a valuable resource, or, more colloquially, to point to the real or imagined origin of something of great import or abundance. Plumbing the possibilities of this linguistic trope, this exhibition brings together more than forty artistic practices, choreographed in chapters as a collective cohabitation that offers myriad ruminations on beginnings. The artists included deploy both memory and material as generative forces, probing ideas of land as Mother Earth, the bonds of mother and child, the physical accumulation of experience, and the tending nature of ongoing diaristic pursuits. From the development of personal mythologies to processes laid bare through the cycles of extraction and regeneration, the works in this exhibition span form and medium, dating from the late 1960s to the present day. They capture the universality of lineage that unfurls in the activities of making and the inherent truths discovered in process.

The exhibition posits the questions: How do artists engage with their own origins, their own “primary vein”? How does the accretion of material experimentation in itself birth an unfolding story as told by the artist’s hand? How do artistic practices pay homage to the notions of care, both physical and emotional, of this abundant material world and the humans who mingle with and mine from it?

Mother Lode: Material and Memory features work by Kelly Akashi, Alma Allen, Mark Bradford, Richard Van Buren, Kathy Butterly, Sarah Charlesworth, Ann Craven, Abraham Cruzvillegas, N. Dash, Moyra Davey, Leonardo Drew, Bracha Ettinger, Rochelle Feinstein, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Nancy Graves, Luchita Hurtado, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Gary Hume, Lotus L. Kang, Clementine Keith-Roach, Antonia Kuo, Mernet Larsen, Heidi Lau, June Leaf, Yasue Maetake, Wallen Mapondera, Teresa Margolles, Nick Mauss, Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Gabriel Orozco, Julia Phillips, Howardena Pindell, Marianna Pineda, Garnett Puett, Ronny Quevedo, Maja Ruznic, Grace Schwindt, Joan Semmel, Erin Shirreff, Rose B. Simpson, Michelle Stuart, Antonio Tarsis, Sara VanDerBeek, Willa Wasserman, Emmi Whitehorse, and Yu-Wen Wu.