A new exhibition, Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life, will gather works by 10 contemporary artists who draw on the legacy of still life painting in their practice. 

Still life has a long reputation as a genre for aesthetic experimentation, and the artists in Abundance/Excess continue in this tradition of exploration and play while also incorporating still life’s thematic emphasis on time, impermanence, and the politics of bounty. 

The first section of the exhibition, “Abundance,” will feature contemporary artworks that interrogate the forms and distribution of wealth in American history, and to question how we buy and sell in the present. The second section of the exhibition, “Excess,” considers the environmental and social impacts of overconsumption. Many of the featured artworks incorporate discarded and repurposed materials, including bath towels, trash-picked toys, and collaged grocery flyers. As a whole, the artists in Abundance/Excess use representations of fish, fruit, meat, and flowers to consider larger questions about the effects and consequences of industrial extraction and production. 

Artists in the exhibition are Kate Abercrombie, Sungho Bae, Katie Butler, Ilana Harris-Babou, Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib, King Cobra, Tamara Kostianovsky, sTo Len, Cara Romero, and Misha Wyllie.

Upcoming programs and events related to the exhibition include lively discussions about “Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still-Life,” on Wednesday, April 15, Wednesday, April 22, Wednesday, April 29, and Wednesday, May 6. Each discussion takes place from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. 

Abundance/Excess: A Contemporary Eye on Still Life is curated by Kerry Bickford, the associate curator at the Brandywine Museum of Art. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Every Page Foundation and the Tuttleman Family Foundation. 

The Brandywine Museum of Art features an outstanding collection of American art housed in a 19th-century Mill building with a dramatic steel and glass addition overlooking the banks of the Brandywine Creek. 

The museum is located on Route 1 in Chadds Ford. Current admission rates and hours of operation can be found at www.brandywine.org/hours. Guided tours of the Andrew Wyeth Studio, N. C. Wyeth House & Studio and the Kuerner Farm—all National Historic Landmarks—are available seasonally (for an additional fee), and advance reservations are recommended. 

For more information, call 610-388-2700 or visit brandywine.org/museum.