Noriko Ambe, State of Flow: Andy Warhol “Flowers”, Leo Castelli, 1964

November 12, 2024 - January 17, 2025

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Sixty years ago, Andy Warhol opened his first exhibition at Leo Castelli at 4 East 77th Street. Titled Andy Warhol. Flower Paintings, the exhibition presented a wall in which twenty-eight small paintings were displayed very close together in a 4 x 7-foot grid. The flower petals ranged in color and were a stark contrast against the grey grass in the foreground.

In 2020, artist Massimo Barzagli wrote about the exhibition and noted that it was not a coincidence that Warhol chose to present the exhibition in 1964, “The Vietnam War is in full swing and many young people, who had left for service in the mid 1950s are returning home as martyrs.” Flowers can be both decorative and commemorative, and while at first glance Warhol’s exhibition may appear as just a simple pleasantry, one can also look at it as a memorial for the young Americans who lost their lives in Vietnam.

The exhibition signaled the beginning of a long collaboration between Andy Warhol and Leo Castelli. To remember it, Castelli Gallery invited artist Noriko Ambe to reflect on the show and create a response to the exhibition on its sixty-year anniversary.

Using black and white images from the gallery’s archive as a reference, Ambe reproduced the original canvases in four different ways. The depths of color are depicted in varying shades of grey in the archival photography and to symbolize this, Ambe layered sheets of Yupo paper of varying thickness. Each sheet of Yupo paper is intricately cut to express the way the shape of the flower is inverted as hollow. This ultimately transforms the shape of the flowers, which repeat like mirror images, into a void-like presence. Therefore, Warhol’s lively colors are replaced by emptiness and white, repeating the message of beauty in flowers and a sense of loss.

Additionally, the artist created three cutting and pasting books and was largely influenced by the political environment at the time of the 1964 show. As Ambe states, “I thought about historical perspectives and aimed to create an exhibition with a multi-layered interpretation in a contemporary context by expressing this complexity through the medium of paper cutting and books.”