Galerie Kugel and David Zwirner are pleased to announce Set in Stone, an expansive group exhibition. Curated by Emma Kronman, this presentation at David Zwirner’s East 69th Street location in New York places a considered group of paintings and sculpture by modern and contemporary artists from David Zwirner’s program in conversation with Galerie Kugel’s holdings of antique hardstone objects dating from classical antiquity through the nineteenth century.

Inspired by some of the qualities that have influenced artists over history to work with stone, the exhibition centers on four themes that speak to process and appearance—luminosity, translucency, assemblage, and colorlessness—and illustrates these complementary concerns through unexpected juxtapositions of medium and technique. While the works on view range widely in how each artist makes use of light, color, texture, and scale, the presentation suggests insightful resonances among this diversity and demonstrates the continued relevance of such formal investigations. In pursuit of visual splendor and material complexity, these artists find a shared visual language that spans millennia, geography, and cultural contexts.