How Much A Heart Can Hold invites the viewer to explore Petah Coyne’s work as a multifaceted and long-running conversation about the complexity and creativity of women.
It is divided into three sections: Women’s Work, Women’s Relationships, and Women Obscured & Transformed. Originally intended as an exhibition organizational structure that avoided the pull of a chronological arrangement, it is now clear that all the works reside in each of the categories, and now these three threads weave and plait together as part of a more nuanced understanding not only of Coyne’s oeuvre, but also how a single artist’s work is intertwined and in dialogue with friends and creatives both near in time and space, and long past or far afield.
Petah Coyne: How Much a Heart Can Hold is organized by the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Generous support for this exhibition was provided by Stephen and Pamela Hootkin, and the Anonymous Fund.
Image: Petah Coyne, Untitled #1378 (Zelda Fitzgerald), 1997-2013. Specially formulated wax, pigment, silk flowers, candles, paint, white pearl-headed hat pins, artficial pearl strands, cast-wax statuary figure, cast-wax hand sculptures, ribbon, knitting needles, steel rods, chicken-wire fencing, washers, fabric, thread, wire, horse hair, Masonite, plywood, drywall, plaster, glue, filament, rubber, steel, wood and metal screws, maple, and laminated Luxar, 81 3/16 x 35 3/4 x 35 3/4 in. (206.2 x 90.8 x 90.8 cm). Joen Greenwood Endowment Fund purchase, 2018.39a-b. Photo credit: Christopher Burke Studios
