Leonie Guyer – Amitie

500 Capp Street is pleased to present Amitié, a two-person exhibition by artist Léonie Guyer and Joyce Burstein, curated by Nancy Nguyen. Guyer and Burstein come together through their shared connection to David Ireland, each bringing their own sensibility to the house. 

Leonie Guyer’s practice is characterized by idiosyncratic shapes that are deployed in a variety of spaces. A painting sits in the sky in a window in the back office, while other works realized on antique and salvaged paper, or marble remnants, extend into other rooms of the house. 

Joyce Burstein’s work functions as sculpture and action, both permanent and temporal. Laws prohibiting flag desecration have set in motion an irony of waste in which recycling centers stockpile flags indefinitely. Working with these materials, Burstein deconstructs and reconstructs the flag in an ongoing project, the flag of the night sky. Liberated stars will be installed throughout the site, alongside a finger nail drawing and a preserved drop of water. 

Alongside their works, many never before shown works by David Ireland will be on display for the first time in the house. One is a monotype from Ireland’s Thangka series, prints made using paint, shoe polish, and layers of ink. Both artists will also collaborate in curating works of Ireland’s, including small works made using cement, wood, and sanding blocks. 

Amitié, a word Guyer recalls in Jennie Feldman’s translator’s note to Marcel Proust’s Chardin and Rembrandt, is a term used by Proust that translates to friendship and describes a  connection one has with a perceived object. Here, amitié reflects a gathering, shaped by memory and a kinship with the house. 

Léonie Guyer’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Selected exhibitions include: Petrine, Paris, France; The David Ireland House | 500 Capp Street, SF; Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, SF; UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; Artists Space, NYC; Feature Inc., NYC; Peter Blum Gallery, NYC; Bibeau Krueger, NYC; staircase gallery, SF; Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA; Lumber Room, Portland OR; Shaker Museum, New Lebanon, NY; Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, Portland, OR; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland; 2nd floor projects, SF; Olga Korper Gallery, Toronto; Gallery Joe, Philadelphia, PA. Guyer is the recipient of a 2024 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship; The Jenni Crain Foundation Grant; Foundation for Contemporary Arts; Sites ReSeen Grant, New York State Council on the Arts; John Anson Kittredge Foundation Fellowship; Artist in Residence Grant, California Arts Council; Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts. She received a BFA. and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and lives and works in San Francisco, CA.

Joyce Burstein’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at among others the American Folk Art Museum, NYC; Otis College of Art and Design, LA; Minnesota Street Project, SF; Anglim/Trimble, SF; The Venice Biennale Collateral Exhibition, Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione;  Socrates Sculpture Park, NYC; Art Omi: The Sculpture & Architecture Park, Omi, NY; Lake View Cemetery & Arboretum, Cleveland, OH; Hollywood Forever Cemetery, LA; The Lab, SF; Spaces, Cleveland,The David Ireland House | 500 Capp Street. She is a recipient of grants/fellowships from Art Matters, The Institute of Noetic Science, New York Foundation for the Arts, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Transart Experimental Workshop for Art and Anthropology; Burstein received her BFA/MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and lives and works in New York City.