Bernard Frize, Suite Segond 100 No 3, 1980
Household paint on canvas
51 x 64 inches

 January 14 – March 10, 2012

The Indiscipline of Painting is an international group exhibition including works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected by British painter Daniel Sturgis, it considers how the languages of abstraction have remained urgent, relevant and critical as they have been revisited and reinvented by subsequent generations of artists over the last 50 years. It goes on to demonstrate the way in which the history and legacy of abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.

The contemporary position of abstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with a modernist moment that has long since passed, and an ideology which led the medium to stagnate in self-reflexivity and ideas of historical progression. The Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

The show brings together works by British, American and European artists made over the last five decades and features major new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley alongside other lesser known artists such as Tomma Abts, Martin Barré, Mary Heilmann and Jeremy Moon.

The Indiscipline of Painting is a collaborative project between Tate St Ives and Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre. The exhibition travels to the Mead Gallery and opens on the 14 January 2012, running until 10 March 2012.

As part of The Indiscipline of Painting, Newlyn Art Gallery has commissioned John M. Armleder to make a major new work. John M. Armleder is at Newlyn Art Gallery 8 October 2011 – 3 January 2012.

The exhibition will be showing works from the following 49 artists (in alphabetical order):

Tomma Abts born 1967; John M. Armleder born 1948 ; Tauba Auerbach born 1981; Martin Barré 1924 – 1993; Francis Baudevin born 1964; Daniel Buren born 1938 ; André Cadere 1934‑1978; Ingrid Calame born 1965 ; Keith Coventry born 1958 ; Michael Craig‑Martin born 1941 ; Karin Davie born 1965; Peter Davies born 1970; Gene Davis 1920‑1985; David Diao born 1943; Moira Dryer 1957 – 1992; Bernard Frize born 1949; Michelle Grabner born 1962; Tim Head born 1946; Alex Hubbard born 1975; Katharina Grosse born 1961; Peter Halley born 1953; Jane Harris born 1956; Mary Heilmann born 1940 ; Jacob Kassay born 1984; Richard Kirwan born 1969; Imi Knoebel born 1940; Bob Law 1934‑2004; Sherrie Levine born 1947; Jeremy Moon 1934‑1973; Olivier Mosset born 1944; Carl Ostendarp born 1961; Blinky Palermo 1943‑1977; Steven Parrino 1958-2005; David Reed born 1946; Gerhard Richter born 1932; Bridget Riley born 1931; Ruth Root born 1967; Robert Ryman born 1930; Sean Scully born 1945; Frank Stella born 1936; Myron Stout 1908-1987; Daniel Sturgis born 1966; Cheyney Thompson born 1975; Niele Toroni born 1937; Richard Tuttle born 1941; Dan Walsh born 1960; Andy Warhol 1928‑1987; Peter Young born 1940; Heimo Zobernig born 1958.

The exhibition has been selected by British artist Daniel Sturgis, and curated with Martin Clark, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives and Sarah Shalgosky, Curator, University of Warwick.

Ted Stamm at his studio
101 Wooster Street, January 1980
Photo courtesy of Abby Robinson

September 24 – October 29, 2011

MINUS SPACE is delighted to present the exhibition Ted Stamm: Paintings, an overview of paintings, works on paper, street interventions, and other materials by the late NYC-based abstract painter. Prior to his unexpected death from heart failure in 1984, Stamm created a substantial, mature body of work that was at once responsive to the past, indicative of his time, and prescient of the future.

Ted Stamm was born in Brooklyn in 1944. At age eleven, his family moved to Freeport, Long Island, where he spent the remainder of his youth. He enrolled in Hofstra University in the mid-1960s, where he began by studying graphic design. He quickly moved into painting studying with artists Perle Fine and John Hopkins. He also studied printmaking with artist Richard Pugliese, who later introduced him to the Soho art world. Stamm moved to Soho permanently upon graduating from Hofstra University in 1968.

Between 1968-1972, Stamm produced lyrical abstract paintings consisting of poured red, blue, and pink paint on canvas. In the summer of 1972, he began to cover up these earlier works with grids-like patterns of black marks; he referred to these as his “cancel paintings”. Inspired by the late work of Ad Reinhardt, Stamm consistently used the color black in his paintings from this moment forward. He associated black with rebellion, rigor, and reduction.

In 1973, Stamm began making conceptually-driven work based on chance systems – rolling dice or spinning a roulette wheel – that would determine the format and number of painting layers for a specific work. In 1974, he started working with shaped stretchers and introduced the element of line into his paintings. A year later, Stamm produced his “Wooster” series inspired by a form he had seen on Wooster Street where he lived. At this time, he also began making on his “Dodger” paintings named after the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. The curved forms and right angles used in these paintings were likely derived from the shape of a baseball field diamond. Examples of both Stamm’s “Wooster” and “Dodger” paintings will be included in the exhibition.

Increasingly engrossed by the concept of speed, the aerodynamic design of cars, trains, and airplanes, and the Modernist charge to reinvent painting for future generations, Stamm began developing his “C-Dodger” paintings in the last 1970s. The “C” in the title referred to the supersonic airplane The Concorde, which Stamm would often travel to see arrive and depart at Kennedy Airport in NYC. Similarly, his “Zephyr” paintings begun in 1979 were informed by the futuristic, stainless steel train that set a speed record for travel between Denver and Chicago in 1934. His later paintings “ZCTs” and “CDDs” from early 1980s hybridized various elements from his earlier “Wooster” and “Dodger” works and were hung low on the wall just inches off the ground. One of Stamm’s “Zephyr” paintings, ZYR-4 (1979, oil on canvas, 33 x 114 inches), will be on view in the exhibition.

During his career, Stamm was also engaged in making highly experimental works produced in collaboration with other artists and individuals. His “Tag” pieces enlisted the participation of visitors to his studio who were asked to make a mark of their choosing onto a found garment tag that was glued down onto a page in a sketchbook. Stamm would respond to this mark in a second sketchbook of the same design. Both pages were then stamped with the date and other collateral information to create a record of their exchange.

Starting in the mid-1970s, Stamm also made proto-graffiti street interventions, which he termed “Designators”. Using a small stencil of his “Dodger” shape, he painted the shape in black on buildings and other locations in NYC that had personal significance to him. When he returned to a specific site and saw that his original mark had been altered, he would paint the shape again in silver. On his third visit, he would stencil a black “T” on the silver shape. On his fourth and final visit, he would add a second “T”, this time in silver. Images of Stamm’s street interventions will be included in his show, as well as documentation by photographer Abby Robinson of his participation in the Pool Project organized by artist Russell Maltz at the C.W. Post College, Greenvale, NY, in the late 1970s.

In one of his few written statements about his work, Stamm asserts “my work deals with an idealism which announces and supports the advancement of the art language, specifically painting”. More than 25 years after his death, it is clear that Stamm’s persona and character, his optimism about painting’s enduring possibilities and future advancement, and his expanded practice both in and out of the studio were of great significance to his artist contemporaries. His work also anticipated the conceptual strategies and material inquiries of subsequent generations of artists who came of age in NYC during the past three decades.

Ted Stamm (b. 1944 Brooklyn, NY; d. 1984 New York, NY) exhibited his work internationally during his lifetime, including in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at venues, such as Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, The Clocktower, Marianne Boesky Gallery, Condeso/Lawler Gallery (all New York City), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, NY), Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum (Ridgefield, CT), Rose Art Museum (Waltham, MA), Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati, OH), Museum of Art (Fort Lauderdale, FL), Oklahoma Museum of Art (Oklahoma City, OK), Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA), Grand Rapids Art Museum (Grand Rapids, MI), Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, AL), Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO), Atkins Museum of Fine Art (Kansas City, MO), Akademie Der Kunste (Berlin, Germany), and Louisiana Museum (Humlebaek, Denmark).

In 1977, Stamm was included by curator Manfred Schneckenburger in Documenta 6 in Kassel, Germany. His work was exhibited alongside artists, such as Carl Andre, Daniel Buren, James Lee Byars, Walter De Maria, Eva Hesse, Donald Judd, Imi Knoebel, Sol Lewitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Morris, Blinky Palermo, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, and Richard Serra, among others. In addition, Stamm exhibited his work at the legendary Downtown artist-founded venues 112 Greene Street (1975), Artists Space (1975, 1980), and Franklin Furnace (1977, 1980).

Stamm received awards in Painting from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1983) and the National Endowments for the Arts (1981-1982). His work has been reviewed in publications, such as The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Arts Magazine, and The Baltimore Sun, among others.

Stamm’s work is included in the public collections of Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY), Carnegie Museum (Pittsburgh, PA), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, CA); Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix, AZ), The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (Ridgefield, CT), Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY), and Western Australia Art Gallery (Perth, Australia).

CATALOG
Ted Stamm: Painting Advance 1990, Hillwood Art Gallery, Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, NY, 1986 (PDF)

PRESS
Ted Stamm: Paintings at MINUS SPACE, by Pac Pobric, On-Verge, November 27, 2011
Ted Stamm: Paintings at MINUS SPACE, by Brett Baker, Painters’ Table, October 8, 2011
Ted Stamm @ MINUS SPACE, by Mark Dagley, Abaton Book Company, October 6, 2011
Best Exhibition Award, DUMBO Arts Festival, September 23-25, 2011
The Reductive Expands: MINUS SPACE will move from 175 feet in Gowanus to a Dumbo loft, by Stephen Maine, Artcritical, September 12, 2011
Gowanus Gallery MINUS SPACE Moving to Dumbo, by Benjamin Sutton, The L Magazine, September 1, 2011

SUPPORT
MINUS SPACE would like to thank Russell Maltz, Per Haubro Jensen, Abby Robinson, Linda Levit, Serra Pradhan, and Marianne Boesky Gallery for their expert assistance with this exhibition. MINUS SPACE’s programming is made possible by the generous support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you!

MINUS SPACE (new location)
111 Front Street, Suite 226, Brooklyn, NY 11201
DUMBO | Between Washington + Adams
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm and by appointment

Mary Heilmann, Primalon Ballroom, 2002

October 8, 2011 – January 3, 2012

The Indiscipline of Painting is an international group exhibition including works by forty-nine artists from the 1960s to now. Selected by British painter Daniel Sturgis, it considers how the languages of abstraction have remained urgent, relevant and critical as they have been revisited and reinvented by subsequent generations of artists over the last 50 years. It goes on to demonstrate the way in which the history and legacy of abstract painting continues to inspire artists working today.

The contemporary position of abstract painting is problematic. It can be seen to be synonymous with a modernist moment that has long since passed, and an ideology which led the medium to stagnate in self-reflexivity and ideas of historical progression. The Indiscipline of Painting challenges such assumptions. It reveals how painting’s modernist histories, languages and positions have continued to provoke ongoing dialogues with contemporary practitioners, even as painting’s decline and death has been routinely and erroneously declared.

The show brings together works by British, American and European artists made over the last five decades and features major new commissions and loans. It includes important works by Andy Warhol, Frank Stella, Gerhard Richter and Bridget Riley alongside other lesser known artists such as Tomma Abts, Martin Barré, Mary Heilmann and Jeremy Moon.

The Indiscipline of Painting is a collaborative project between Tate St Ives and Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre. The exhibition travels to the Mead Gallery and opens on the 14 January 2012, running until 10 March 2012.

As part of The Indiscipline of Painting, Newlyn Art Gallery has commissioned John M. Armleder to make a major new work. John M. Armleder is at Newlyn Art Gallery 8 October 2011 – 3 January 2012.

The exhibition will be showing works from the following 49 artists (in alphabetical order):

Tomma Abts born 1967; John M. Armleder born 1948 ; Tauba Auerbach born 1981; Martin Barré 1924 – 1993; Francis Baudevin born 1964; Daniel Buren born 1938 ; André Cadere 1934‑1978; Ingrid Calame born 1965 ; Keith Coventry born 1958 ; Michael Craig‑Martin born 1941 ; Karin Davie born 1965; Peter Davies born 1970; Gene Davis 1920‑1985; David Diao born 1943; Moira Dryer 1957 – 1992; Bernard Frize born 1949; Michelle Grabner born 1962; Tim Head born 1946; Alex Hubbard born 1975; Katharina Grosse born 1961; Peter Halley born 1953; Jane Harris born 1956; Mary Heilmann born 1940 ; Jacob Kassay born 1984; Richard Kirwan born 1969; Imi Knoebel born 1940; Bob Law 1934‑2004; Sherrie Levine born 1947; Jeremy Moon 1934‑1973; Olivier Mosset born 1944; Carl Ostendarp born 1961; Blinky Palermo 1943‑1977; Steven Parrino 1958-2005; David Reed born 1946; Gerhard Richter born 1932; Bridget Riley born 1931; Ruth Root born 1967; Robert Ryman born 1930; Sean Scully born 1945; Frank Stella born 1936; Myron Stout 1908-1987; Daniel Sturgis born 1966; Cheyney Thompson born 1975; Niele Toroni born 1937; Richard Tuttle born 1941; Dan Walsh born 1960; Andy Warhol 1928‑1987; Peter Young born 1940; Heimo Zobernig born 1958.

The exhibition has been selected by British artist Daniel Sturgis, and curated with Martin Clark, Artistic Director, Tate St Ives and Sarah Shalgosky, Curator, University of Warwick.

Installation view.
Works by Joseph Kosuth, Guillaume Leblon, and François Morellet.

March 17 – July 9, 2011

The title of this project ‘STRATES ET ARTS, autour de Francois Morellet’ refers to a palindrome created by Francois Morellet in 1999.

It takes place at the gallery simultaneously to the current retrospective exhibition, ‘Francois Morellet, Réinstallations’ (March 2 – July 4), to be held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

The Galerie Hervé Bize, which has a special relationship with the artist since over twenty years, is conceiving an exhibition that includes works by French and international artists: Bernard Piffaretti, Claude Closky, Stéphane Dafflon, Vera Molnar, Silvia Bächli, Yann Sérandour, Guillaume Leblon, Alan Charlton, Joseph Kosuth, Günther Főrg, Olivier Mosset, Chuck Nanney, Blinky Palermo, Helmut Federle, Daniel Dezeuze, Franz Erhard Walther and naturally Francois Morellet.

This exhibition should be considered as a small constellation of affinities woven around a towering figure in contemporary art, Francois Morellet, whose influence, constantly growing, is not always measured as it is not limited to field strictly connected to geometrical abstraction: the introduction of a process, the establishment of a program or system, the reduction of subjective decisions, questions about color, monochrome , black / white, or delegate the execution and the introduction of new materials or a technique of reproduction, the relation to the language, etc. are some of the parameters which are the heart of the approach shared by Morellet and the invited artists.

‘STRATES ET ARTS’ is assembling paintings, drawings, installations and some rare editions.

It is also returning the viewer to an aesthetic whose foundations derive the intellectual revival of the 1960-70 period, largely anticipated by Morellet in the early 1950s.

It is naturally impossible, through this exhibition, to understand what connects all these different personalities but so far, all these works give ostensibly a corpus of art thoughts at the junction of minimalism and an impression of radicalism iconoclast.

Installation view.

March 3 – May 27, 2011

Works by Alberto Burri, Piero Manzoni, Otto Muehl, Dan Colen, Paola Pivi, Piotr Uklanski, Rosemarie Trockel, Blinky Palermo, Franz West, Richard Tuttle, Lynda Benglis, Julian Schnabel, Ana Betbeze, Andy Warhol, and more.

October 2, 2010 – February 13, 2012

Dia Art Foundation presents Franz Erhard Walther: Work as Action, opening October 2, 2010, at Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries. This major exhibition will comprise more than two dozen works by Walther (German, b. 1937), who is internationally recognized for his five-decade-long investigation into the foundations of action, language, and space. Organized by Dia curator Yasmil Raymond, Franz Erhard Walther: Work as Action will remain on view through February 13, 2012. It is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States since 1990.

While the exhibition will include a diverse selection of works created between 1962 and 1973, it will focus on the artist’s Handlungsstücke (Action Pieces) and Werkstücke (Work Pieces) from the early 1960s. It was in these works that Walther first explored using straightforward physical actions—such as pressing, folding, unfolding, and covering surfaces with malleable materials—as a sculptural principle. The centerpiece of the exhibition will be the complete presentation of a Work Piece from Dia’s collection, titled 1. Werksatz (First Work Set). Dating from 1963–69, this comprises fifty-eight fabric elements, or “instruments for processes,” that are intended to be unfolded, used, and worn by visitors according to the artist’s instructions.

Walther’s provocative meditations on the concept of art as an act of “doing” that is temporal, subjective, and open to interpretation have resulted in an interdisciplinary practice that challenges conventional categories of painting and sculpture. He elaborated on these ideas in First Work Set, which will be shown in its totality for the first time in the United States since 1970, when it was included in the exhibition “Spaces,” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. This major work, acquired by Dia in 1978, is a pioneering example of installation art, one that reconsiders the space of display as a “storage site” where objects are accessible to visitors and their forms determined by the ways in which they are used. With each of the work’s elements, Walther poses a spatial and temporal challenge for the beholder, whose physical actions and presence become integral parts of the conception and completion of the work. A selection of elements from First Work Set will be made available for interaction with visitors, from 11am to 1pm and 2pm to 4pm on days the museum is open, for the duration of the exhibition.

In the early 1960s, Walther trained at the Offenbach School of Applied Art and at the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie. Early influences included the work and manifestos of artists Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, and Piero Manzoni, among others, who together triggered his conviction to, as he once said, “conceive work out of an action.” While at the Kunstakademie, he also became acquainted with Joseph Beuys and befriended fellow students Gerhard Richter and Blinky Palermo, the latter of whom he shared a studio with. Both Beuys and Richter have works on long-term view at Dia:Beacon, and Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977 will be on view at Dia:Beacon from June through October 2011, concurrent with Walther’s exhibition.

Despite the importance of his work, his relationship with many American artists, and the influence of his extensive output on subsequent generations of artists, Walther’s practice remains largely unknown in the United States. Dia’s exhibition recognizes the historical significance of the artist’s First Work Set and his radical conception of the work of art as an experience of uninhibited action.

October 31, 2010 – January 16, 2011

While Blinky Palermo’s reputation as one of the foremost post-war abstract painters is well established in Europe, his work is rarely seen in North America. Beginning its yearlong tour at LACMA, this is the first comprehensive retrospective of the work of this German artist in the United States.

The exhibition provides an in-depth examination of the evolution of Palermo’s aesthetic, illustrating the significance of his contribution to post-war art. It surveys the four principal groups of work, created after he graduated from Joseph Beuys’s class at the Dusseldorf Art Academy in 1964, that comprise his oeuvre: the Objects; Cloth Pictures; documentation of in situ Wall Paintings and Drawings; and examples of his late Metal Pictures.

Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977 has been curated by Lynne Cooke. Organized by Dia Art Foundation and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, it will be accompanied by a full-color publication, co-published by Dia and Yale University Press.

Installation view

June 22 – July 31, 2010

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery presents Shape Language, a group exhibition organized by Natalie Campbell.The works on view rethink the basics of color and form while treading the line between what is inside and outside a formal vocabulary. The starting point for the exhibition is Blinky Palermo’s Graue Scheibe from 1970, in which form attains a precarious autonomy: an irregular lozenge of shaped noncolor, floating (almost) freely on the gallery wall.

Shapemaking is an incessant, purposeful activity; it allows forms to speak and generate their own next iteration or question, as is apparent in Amy Sillman’s humanized, electric canvas and Imi Knoebel’s Messerschnitte collage series. A sense of experimentation carries through the silhouettes and shadows in Amy Granat’s photographs of destroyed, manipulated film. Jason Tomme’s hybrid of painting and monotype uses spray paint and a pressed sheet of paper to make process, physicality, and serendipity visible, while the marks in Zak Prekop’s delicate painting emerge from a process both immediate and contemplative. A hulking, monolithic sculpture by Esther Kläs creates an almost human personality out of surface and volume. Everyday materials generate their own unique idioms: in Patrick Brennan’s paintings, the matter-of-fact layering of paint, popsicle sticks, silk, and other craft media embeds daily life within an anxious yet confident visual field.

The curves and planes of Keiko Narahashi’s half-formed clay pots create surprising, unstable relationships that shift fluidly between two and three dimensions. A similar optical play emerges between the rigid lines and the traces of spray paint in Ned Vena’s painting. Simultaneously physical and disembodied, the shaped and stacked canvases of Joe Bradley and Wendy White make use of the tension between surface and edge, fullness and emptiness. Adam McEwen defamiliarizes shape and opens it to new meanings, appropriating and altering a form from Ellsworth Kelly’s Curve series with representations of banal text messages. Playing off of the contrasts and harmonies among these works, the exhibition coheres around the near-freedom of a visual language grounded in the physical world.

Charlotte Posenenske, Vierkantrohre Serie D, 1967
(Reconstruction 2009)

March 12 – May 30, 2010

The initial exhibition at Daimler Contemporary in 2010 will show major 1960s trends in German abstract art from the Daimler Art Collection: Constructivism, Zero, Minimal Art, Concept and Seriality. Starting with 1950s predecessors – such as Josef Albers, Norbert Kricke and Siegfried Cremer – the show considers abstract art developments in the cities of Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Krefeld, Stuttgart, Berlin and Munich, but also looks at contiguous Swiss positions. About 60 works by 28 artists are being presented, all developing a specifically German Minimalism in the period from 1954 to 1974 in various media (sculpture, painting, film and drawing).

Participating Artists:
Karl Heinz Adler, Josef Albers, Joachim Albrecht, Peter Benkert, Hartmut Böhm, Siegfried Cremer, Hanne Darboven, Karl Gerstner, Imi Giese, Mathias Goeritz, Kuno Gonschior, Gerhard von Graevenitz, Hajo Hangen, Erwin Heerich, Gottfried Honegger, Norbert Kricke, Thomas Lenk, Heinz Mack, Karl Georg Pfahler, Verena Pfisterer, Charlotte Posenenske, Christian Roeckenschuss, Peter Roehr, Ulrich Rückriem, Eckhard Schene, Klaus Staudt, Franz Erhard Walther, Herbert Zangs

In the early sixties in Germany, a new kind of Minimalism developed that was initially largely independent from the developments in America at the time. This German Minimalism was in many cases stimulated by, but also in conflict with, Concrete Art and the European Zero avant-garde, which drew attention to it from 1957 on, starting in Düsseldorf, with unusually staged exhibitions and spectacular projects for public space. The steles, cubes, and picture objects produced by the Zero artists, which lay in the space or stood in front of the wall, represent a significant new step for German art in terms of quality around 1959/60. The Düsseldorf Kunstakademie played an important role in the transition to a specifically German Minimalism from 1962 until around 1970. In the sixties, it provided many of its students with a basis for examining minimalized sculpture. Among them, the young Franz Erhard Walther developed his first proto-Minimalist objects starting in 1962, followed in 1964/65 by Imi Knoebel, Imi Giese, and Blinky Palermo. At the same time, Hanne Darboven in Hamburg, Charlotte Posenenske in Offenbach and, outside academic contexts, Peter Roehr in Frankfurt conceived their first attempts at Minimalist works.

On the occasion of this pioneering exhibition there will be a three-day symposium on May 15 -17, 2010, held at Daimler Contemporary in Berlin. The publicly accessible symposium is inviting protagonists, important collectors, curators and active gallery owners of the time, academics, art critics and journalists, who will give insights in talks, panel discussions and specific lectures. By engaging experts from the respective genres the symposium aims to draw an encompassing picture of the minimalist movement in the field of music, literature, film and dance in Germany.

Daniel Göttin, Transformer 2, 2008

After 2step, minimalpop, Painted Objects, Double Exposure, A Bit O’ White, My Eyes Keep Me In Trouble, Yo, Mo’ Modernism, With Your Eyes Only, COMPOSITE VISIONS is the ninth touring group exhibition organized by CCNOA, Brussels, Belgium.

Since its last theoretical stance as a sublime yet powerful art form, creating a new -ism and ironically also stating the end not only of painting but possibly also of visual art in general, and of its intellectual process, the idea of the ‘reductive’ itself has made an impressive return. Traces of the idea of the ‘reductive’ and similar approaches to art-making can be found in many artistic oeuvres which have come into the limelight since the overpowering postmodern related statements by artists and critics in the late 80’s, and the aesthetics of the ‘reductive’, nonobjective and concrete are now a subject of reflection in contemporary art practices, re-emerging from an imposed quasi non-existence.

In this state of relative non-recognition within the discourse and debate around art and culture in general, the subject of the ‘reductive’ as a possible antithesis to the overpowering reintroduction of representational painting and at the same time to the emergence of the focus on new media, technology and photography, has regained considerable strength over the last decade within an international frame of cultural production and commerce, as well as through the firmly held lone positions of artists like Mosset, Charlton, Armleder, Morellet, Palermo and others throughout the 80’s and 90’s.

Having seemingly recovered from the harsh critical overtones after almost being eliminated from contemporary discourse, in which a retroactive and purely commercial tone took over, the ideas and strategies of the ‘reductive’ and ‘essential’ have slowly found their way back into artistic language and practice. Yet, due to the visual superimpositions of present times, artists have started to shy away from the rigid limitations of -isms related to the ‘non-objective’ or ‘reductive’ and have embedded existing ideas, confluence of styles and approaches into the contemporary world, the here and now, mingling with popular culture as well as branching out of the studio practice inherent in painting as we know it and as the majority still likes to understand it.

Crossovers with other forms of art, like pop art, installation, and new media, play a major role in this new understanding of art-making in the realm of the ‘reductive’ and in its breaking out of its claimed territory with excursions into new planes of understanding, confronting the remarkable stakes which are on offer within the perimeter of ‘reductive’ art production today.

COMPOSITE VISIONS is triggered by the multitude of influences entering the thinking, thought process and practices of an array of like-minded contemporary artists from around the globe working within the fascinating and resilient discourse surrounding the historical, formal and contemporary explorations within the field of the ‘reductive’ in general and ‘reductive’ painting in particular.

Organized by the Brussels-based CCNOA COMPOSITE VISIONS comprises the work of 16 international artists and aims to give a modest inside overview of the possibilities within this broad approach. This type of exhibition is never able to display the entire palette of diversity; CCNOA’s objective is simply to document some of the thinking around this subject.

Participating Artists:
Kjell Bjorgeengen, Julian Dashper, Delphine Deguislage, Edith Dekyndt, Daniel Gottin, Clemens Hollerer, Camila Oliveira-Fairclough, Ingrid Maria Sinibaldi, Michael Skoda, Tilman, Alan Uglow, Jan van der Ploeg, Dan Walsh, Lars Wolter, Carrie Yamaoka, Beat Zoderer

October 3 – November 15, 2009

Following the presentation of 2 Sea Pieces by Gerhard Richter the MMK Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt/Main is reconstructing Wall Drawing # 261 by Sol LeWitt, which was originally shown 1975 in the Kabinett für aktuelle Kunst in Bremerhaven. The artist, who died in 2007, conceived over 1,000 wall drawings, all of which were numbered and as such represent a lifelong series. The wall drawing has a long tradition in the Kabinett in Bremerhaven, which began in1970 with Blinky Palermo’s wall painting based on the Kabinett’s shop front and continues to this very day. For example, in 2008 Luc Tuymans placed himself in firmly in this lineage and reverted back to Palermo by citing the latter’s drawing with one of his own. Tuymans’s work not only extended across the walls but also onto the floor of the Kabinett.

Sol LeWitt’s career began in the mid-1950s, when he worked as a graphic artist in the studio of architect Ieoh Ming Pei. In the 1960s, he published his own ideas on art theory, among other things in the then pioneering magazine Artforum. With the treatises entitled “Paragraphs on conceptual art” (1967) and a year later “Sentences on conceptual art” he defined a quite unique approach to art, setting it off from the predominant Abstract Expressionism of the day, and coined the term ‘conceptual art’ that was to be used by an entire new generation of artists. He summarized the essence of his views in 1967 as follows: “I will refer to the kind of art in which I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.”

Aside from a few paintings, drawings, and sculptures this idea gave birth to LeWitt’s most famous basic idea – the conception of the wall drawings. The artist’s instructions expressed on paper serve as the basis for the wall painting, which represents the visual, artistic manifestation of the idea. Any skilled drawer could then realize the drawing. The artist himself can, realize his own work, but this was no prerequisite.

A short and clear concept underlies Wall Drawing # 261 – a composition of lines on a colored wall. The person executing the art work is meant to draw 45 white lines on a wall grounded in yellow; the lines must be such that nine lines run from the four corners of the room and another nine lines run from a point in the wall’s center. No specifications are made, however, as to the length of the lines or the exact yellow tone, which is actually the favorite color of Jürgen Wesseler, the driving force behind the Kabinett in Bremerhaven. In other words, the person executing the painting is given a certain leeway from the outset. This introduces an element of planned chance, as it were, into Sol LeWitt’s wall drawing. No two drawings will as a result be identical given that the person realizing them does so according to his own experiences and notions. Moreover, once the artist has formulated the respective idea he can no longer influence the actual oeuvre as realized, because that very realization lies in someone else’s hands. The importance of both chance and of time (after all, the wall drawings tend to only exist temporarily) recall the concept of time and composition used by John Cage not to mention the spirit that infuses Nam June Paik’s works.

Firmly rooted in the critical mindset of the 1960s, LeWitt broke radically with numerous art traditions and questioned the relationship between work and author. The artist’s own act of creation is restricted to the conceptualization and is isolated from the execution of the work by painting/drawing. Since, or so Sol LeWitt’s concept would have it, anyone can realize the work of art, this considerably reduces the aura surrounding the artist as a person inspired by a unique idea. With this novel approach, LeWitt ushered in a significant shift towards an objective art less shaped by the intellect or emotions. Today, it is difficult to imagine how radical this artistic strategy must have seemed 40 years ago.

Click to purchase on Amazon

Twenty-one-year-old Peter Heisterkamp began signing his colorful and playful abstract artworks Palermo in 1964, when peers noted his resemblance to the American gangster Frank “Blinky” Palermo. This handsome book—a historical and critical study of Palermo’s painting from the time he entered Joseph Beuys’ now famous class at the Düsseldorf academy in 1964 to his death in 1977—explores his significance for postwar and abstract art.

Christine Mehring notes that over the course of Palermo’s brief career he created five concurrent but distinct bodies of work: objects, cloth-pictures, wall-paintings, metal-pictures, and collaborative projects, primarily with his friend and colleague Gerhard Richter. Mehring shows how each of these groups demonstrates Palermo’s efforts to lead German art out of its international isolation and to transform modernist painting into historically resonant abstraction by incorporating artifice, humor, period colors, and play.

Christine Mehring is associate professor of art history at The University of Chicago.

January 10 – February 15, 2009

MOT International founder Chris Hammond interviews artist Thomas Kalthoff.

“One cold April afternoon in Cologne I spent a few hours at the studio of an artist I had recently been introduced to. We drank coffee and ate large slabs of gateau whilst discussing painting, Palermo and the Cologne scene in the 1980’s and 90’s. All the while I was flicking through a large pile of photographs of the artist’s work from the last few years, all of which were quite remarkable. What was more remarkable was that Thomas Kalthoff, despite being friends with Krebber since the late 1970’s and having mixed with many of the German heavyweights from the Cologne period, was little known outside his close circle of friends. Even more remarkable was that he had quite happily kept his work to himself for all these years. This exhibition of new works by Thomas Kalthoff at MOT INTERNATIONAL will be the artist’s first in the UK. Below is an abbreviation of our conversations around his work, but viewing this work is the only way to discover Thomas Kalthoff.

Chris Hammond: When did you start to paint the cube\box and what is its’ significance in your work?

Thomas Kalthoff: I started to paint monotone grey boxes on small canvases around 1992-3 for the Friesenwall 120 exhibition. At around 1995 I painted lots of organic formless canvases using only three colours. This developed into grids, rectangles and squares. I rediscovered and started painting boxes again in about 2002.

The significance: I remember that I was very early (1979) inspired by packing cases of washing machines and refrigerators. This not necessary as art but its’ imposing presence in the room. I did not immediately follow this up since I was not interested in commenting on design or packaging at all, but its ambiguity. When I re-discovered the boxes in the 90′s I wanted to explore this vacant quality I had earlier discovered.

CH: What made you move to rendering the boxes as sculpture? Also how do these works relate to the paintings?

TK: I started to make the 3D boxes around 2004. While I had been painting these boxes I had often brought my groceries back from the supermarket in cardboard boxes and they seemed to accumulate in my house. One day it occurred to me to build, out of wood, a 3D version of what I’d been painting. The result fascinated me and I built more to explore this dimension. This in retrospect seems to be a completely natural development. The boxes and paintings are of equal value.

CH: Could you tell me a little about the method of display, the use of home made tables and plinths?

TK: I felt it was very important that every box needed space all around it, It is not just a question of presenting the boxes more officially. The boxes in the paintings for example have to have the space around it. They need their own space. Similarly the 3D boxes could sit on the floor or on a white plinth, but that didn’t seem to be enough. Each box needed its’ own unique stand or table to be displayed on. I felt this accented the character of the boxes.

CH: tell me about colour in the work, do you consider yourself a colourist? Where do the colours come from?

TK: I don’t consider myself to be a colourist. I am not interested in the beauty of the colours themselves. My choice of colour is extremely related to a tension between harmony and discord, accord and disharmony in the relations of the colours to each other. This tension is to find a balance in the colours in each image or box where the colours resonate with each other. I use colours to get a result that creates both conflict and resolution.

There is no model that I use to choose and select the colours. I have a palette of fifty colours and I mix them sometimes with each other but mostly I use them straight from the tube or mix them with white.

CH: How do you place your work in relation to Palermo or anyone else?

TK: I find it very difficult to compare myself to someone who is so well known. I find a great affinity with artists where their work is monochrome and/or the form simple. For example Palermo, Morandi, Tuymans, On Kawara, Zobernig, E. Kelly, De Keyser, West, Gober.

Thomas Kalthoff was born in Essen in 1954. He started studying mathematics in Berlin 1975 – 1976 before changing to art school and in 1979 went to art school Karlsruhe for 1 semester, meeting Michael Krebber. Back in Berlin Kalthoff saw, for the first time, a catalogue by Palermo and everything changed. He found it impossible to paint and spent much of the 1980’s traveling or working in various jobs. In 1988/89 He moved to Cologne, where his friends Krebber and Strothjohann introduced him to the scene there and he was able to start painting again. In 1993 he had his first solo exhibition with about 20 grey box- paintings(fuse- boxes ) and 3 Wittgenstein- house paintings. In 1997 he was in a group show at Galerie Daniel Buchholz with small house paintings and in the same year started to make the grid paintings. In 2002 he had a couple of two-person exhibitions at kjubh Kunstverein. (with Strothjohann) and from this time on was painting mainly the box motif. Kalthoff has remained elusive over the years, showing rarely apart from a few group shows such as at Galerie M 29 in Cologne in 2004. Choosing not to self promote and to concentrate solely upon his work makes Kalthoff unique and this is a great opportunity to discover an artist who has, until now, remained hidden.”

Michael Graeve, Untitled, 2008
Digital print on aluminium, 28 x 36cm

August 27 — September 20, 2008

…”Sometime during the same period I was to read the following passage written about Blinky Palermo and Imi Knoebel:

“Palermo is a craftsman, moving on from one commission to the next and assembling individual pieces with the utmost care; by contrast Imi Knoebel pays his objects just so much attention as they need in order to exist – the attention that a farmer devotes to the separate departments of work on his land. Imi Knoebel treats his work like a farm, on which many different activities are kept going with great skill. Dairy cattle, therefore butter and cheese; perhaps some bulls for breeding; young stock; perhaps a few oxen and pigs; grass for pasture and winter feed; cereal crops of various kinds; woodland for winter felling; any number of fruit trees, and therefore fruit juice and liquor; any amount of chickens and geese; a dog and a couple of cats; perhaps a fine horse; pigeons on the roof; a mill on the stream; and a quarry by the roadside“…

July 2008

Meeting Imi and Blinky at Dia: Beacon, by Sharon Butler 

Philip Guston Works on Paper, by John Yau

June 2008 

David Novros with Phong Bui, by Phong Bui 

Wynn Kramarsky with William Corbett, by William Corbett 

Tribute to Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008), by Dorothea Rockburne & Nan Rosenthal 

Mel Bochner, by David Markus 

Milton Resnick: A Question of Seeing, by Thomas Micchelli 

Weltanschauung and Abstract Painting, by Robert C. Morgan 

Rebecca Horn: Cosmic Maps, by Joan Waltemath 

Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson, by Josh Morgenthau 

May 2008

Abts’ Traction, by Sharon L. Butler 

Helen Miranda Wilson, by John Yau 

April 2008

Tadaaki Kuwayama’s Aesthetics of Infinity, by Robert C. Morgan 

Dan Walsh, by Cassandra Neyenesch 

Ruth Root, by Nora Griffin 

March 2008

Howard Smith Stroke and Structure, by Joan Waltemath 

John Zinsser Recent Work, by Stephanie Buhmann 

Agnes Martin, by Ben La Rocco 

Thomas Nozkowski Paintings, by John Yau 

Harriet Korman Recent Paintings and Drawings, by John Yau 

Agnes Martin’s Homework, by Jeremy Sigler 

Freeze Frame, by Craig Olson

Installation view

May 17, 2008 — ongoing

Dia Art Foundation presents Imi Knoebel’s 24 Colors—for Blinky (1977), at Dia:Beacon. This epic cycle of 21 paintings marks Knoebel’s first sustained engagement with color in its manifold guises. Viewed by him as a gift from his close friend, German painter Blinky Palermo, color would become for Knoebel a primary agent in an ongoing exploration of the metaphysics of picture making. This presentation of 24 Colors—for Blinky will be the first time that the work—acquired for Dia’s collection shortly after it was realized—has been shown in North America. 

Knoebel made 24 Colors—for Blinky shortly after the death of Palermo, whom he called “the master of color.” To create the monumental work, Knoebel constructed 24 individual panels from wood, none of them containing a right angle, and painted each with a single, unmixed hue, ranging from cadmium orange light and quinacridone crimson to phthalo turquoise green and Paynes grey. All but one of the elements of 24 Colors—for Blinky comprises a single-shaped painted wood element; the exception consists of three such panels superimposed on each other. 

In this vibrant suite, Knoebel employed so many different colors that the work connotes the idea of color as a formal entity in and of itself, rather than as a signifying agent. As with key earlier works, the installation of 24 Colors—for Blinky can be variously configured both in terms of sequencing and in the number of elements on view. For the exhibition at Dia:Beacon, 24 Colors—for Blinky has been completely restored by the artist.

Last spring Mark retrieved a group of paintings he had in storage at his parents’ home in Washington, D.C. Although dating from 1986-87, the paintings look to me as if they could have been done yesterday. The paintings do not look like historical pieces, reflective of a specific time, and they would not look out of place in a gallery today. I’ve found in them pop associations to video game, skate board, and surf cultures, though they still preserve a tie to the aforementioned precedents.

DV: Let’s go back a bit… Mark, you studied at the Corcoran in Washington, D.C. Did you study with any of the Washington Color people: Leon Berkowitz, Gene Davis, Thomas Downing, Howard Mehring?

MD: I was at the Corcoran during spring and summer of 1975, taking night and weekend classes in color theory and painting, while still attending high school. Raymond Wilkins, my art instructor at Oakton H.S., suggested these classes, since my interest in painting and sculpture went beyond what he was teaching. So they let me in. Maybe he pulled some strings. I don’t know.

Ed McGowin, Children, 1969
Vacuum formed plexiglass, 10 modules, each 4 foot radius

I took classes with Ed McGowin, whose early vacuum form plastic pieces still look good, and with Lowell Nesbitt, when he was available. They pretty much let me do what I wanted after the first few weeks. I was painting geometrically, more or less, from the beginning f my studies. Not much has changed with my work since then.

I was very grateful–and relieved–that not only Wilkins but the Corcoran instructors had taken me seriously, even though I was only seventeen. They showed me a lot of valuable techniques and studio practice: from cleaning brushes to stretching large canvasses, to using masking tape and architectural templates and tools. Most importantly, I was taught how to apply acrylic and oils in different consistencies to get the effects I was seeing in the work of the D.C. color painters.

My teachers also pointed me to the essays, books and magazines that any young artist should be familiar with. I was brought up to speed fairly quickly, shown that this was a real profession with a living history.

Leon Berkowitz was chairman of the Corcoran’s painting department at that time. Gene Davis, who was quite a star then–about as big as a D.C. artist could be–was there too. Anne Truitt was still alive. Sam Gilliam and William De Looper were quite well known. Even as a student, it was clear to me that a great moment in painting had just passed in the city. Morris Louis had only died a dozen years previously. Color Field was still very much in the air. It was the official party line, so to speak.

Color Field Gallery, Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington D.C., Anne Truitt 17th Summer (left), Paul
Reed #1D (center), Gene Davis Wall Stripes No.3 (right)

P Street was still the center of the D.C. art world then. The Henri Gallery, located there, had a Thomas Downing or a Gene Davis on the walls up until its closing, in the mid-90s. It was run by an old school grand dame who called herself Henri, pronounced with a French accent, though she otherwise sounded–and most likely was–completely American. Things were still 60s cool then, or at least she was. She wore sunglasses and fabulous baubles at all times of the day. I finally introduced myself to her about fifteen years ago and told her about my teenage trips to her gallery. She ended up taking some of my paintings on consignment, but died shortly thereafter. She left her vintage glove collection to my wife, a fellow glamour gal for whom she’d developed a fondness.

DV: You also studied at the Boston Museum School. The Museum of Fine Arts regularly held major exhibitions of the Color Field artists. As an art student in Portland, Maine in the early 70s, I would come down to Boston on field trips and see Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Ken Noland, Jules Olitski, or Larry Poons at the MFA, as well as Joan Snyder’s stroke paintings and Katherine Porter’s early zigzags at the galleries.

MD: Yes, I did attend school there for a short while. I have to say that it was, in many ways, a grave error. The dialogue with working artists that I had experienced in D.C. was sorely lacking. While Professors Natalie Alpert and Sandi Sloan showed some enthusiasm for the dozen of so geometric paintings and the selection of wooden reliefs that my father had helped me transport in a U-Haul trailer, there was little other interest in Color Field or geometric painting at the Boston Museum School.

Mark Dagley
Planks, 1975
Wood, 23 X 38 inches

I couldn’t accept the school’s empty academic formalism. It seemed, in this environment, that painting as I had known it had been played out. Though I appreciated their positive feedback, I found Alpert’s paintings overly fussy and precious, and Sloan’s work at the time wasn’t very compelling to me. I missed the intrigue, the eccentricity, the cut and dry quality that is particular to the best of the D.C. painters.

Gene Davis
Red Dog, 1961

It was big news when visiting artists like Alan Sonfist or Nancy Holt would arrive on campus. The students were supposed to assist them with a project, get some hands-on with a “pro.” I was the only one who helped Alan make 8-foot-high compost heaps in the school courtyard out of wet autumn leaves, lunchroom garbage and dog shit. I don’t think he liked the Museum School much after that. Neither did I. Guess I should’ve enrolled in the course they called “Winning!”

Didn’t receive much, if anything, in terms of practical advice. After being told by instructors whose work was provincial at best, artists without any professional experience, that I would have to begin again–”Slow down a little, kid”–I went my own way, moved my art materials out of the student classrooms and started painting in my studio apartment. I never went back to the painting department, or showed anyone my geometric work again…until I moved to New York in 1979.

The winter of ’76 was so cold that the water in my toilet bowl actually froze. That’s when I started to plan my escape to the Big Apple.

DV: You are also very active as a musician. While in Boston, you were in an art rock post punk band, The Girls, which released a single produced by David Thomas on Pere Ubu’s own Hearthan label. Later, after you moved to New York, you formed a blues-based punk avant garde noise band, Hi Sheriffs of Blue, which also had an acclaimed underground reputation.

MD: Luckily the Museum School had a small electronic music studio with a few decent synthesizers and some other good gear. I hung out there with the other misfits, stoners and rock & rollers. At least they understood that the place was a total drag. I also discovered the photography and video studios, and the performance department, where all the cute arty girls were hanging out. That’s where I learned about Acconci, Beuys, Nauman, the Velvet Underground, Kraut Rock, Eno.

I started going to the New England Conservatory of Music whenever John Cage gave a talk, also to MIT, which had the best videography department in town. Between 1976 and 1979, I met many of the artists and musicians I would later run into in the East Village: Pat Hearn, Mark Dirt, David Bowes, Nan Goldin, Jack & Dan Walworth, John Miller, Peter Dayton.

We would check out parties and events over at Massachusetts College of Art, which was only a few blocks away. That seemed more like the Corcoran–you know, a real art school. I remember being impressed that you could buy art supplies right on campus. No such luck at the Museum School. And Mass Art had an actual stage, a sound system, lights–the whole works. Many of the instructors were professional artists, like Peter Campus and Don Burgy. We would take our videos over and do performances there. Peter Campus would show his latest work along with the students.

By 1976 punk rock had entered everyone’s radar. I had seen Daved Hild, a classmate in electronic music lab, perform at the Museum School in gessoed clothes and white sunglasses with a woman named Pseudo Carol. Since I played guitar, I asked if I could join them. They said yes, but our band days were quite shortlived. Pseudo Carol moved on, and, after playing out a while as a duo, Daved and I set out to find some artists who wanted to start a Captain Beefheart/Kraut Rock type of group. Robin Amos became both our synthesizer and bass player, which wasn’t terribly convenient. We realized we needed a fourth on bass. Daved mentioned a guy named George, who was bringing his guitar to the T-shirt factory they worked at: a really good classical guitarist, funny as hell. A few weeks later, George Condo was in. We chose the most awful name we could think of that still sounded punk: The Girls.

The Girls, circa 1978
From left to right: Mark Dagley, George Condo,
David Hild, Robin Amos
Photo: Margie Politzer

David Thomas heard us perform about a year later and brought us to Cleveland, into the same studio Pere Ubu worked out of. He produced our only single, which he released on his Hearthan label in the spring of 1979. By November of that year, the band had dissolved.

George Condo and I left Boston for New York on an Amtrak train in late December with maybe $400 between us. After getting set up in the East Village, we started another group called Hi Sheriffs of Blue, modeled after the 1950s electric blues bands from Chicago and Detroit. We tried to play not only hard electric blues but punk, fake jazz, funk and rap. We were together for about three years.

DV: You continue to make original and uncompromising music today, often combining slide guitar and electronic effects with fractured rhythms. How does your music feed your visual art making and vice versa?

MD: I’ve been a musician since childhood. We always had a piano in the house, and music lessons were required from day one. I started playing the guitar when I was around eight years old. I was in garage and surf bands with my brothers in grade school, and then during high school in folk, rock and blues bands.

I try to keep whatever I’m involved with musically a little primitive, very clean and simple, but I don’t know if my art really informs it that much. The things I’m interested in doing with painting just don’t apply to my music. I have no problem with the formalist viewpoint: a separation of the arts may be a good thing.

DV: The paintings you are showing at MINUS SPACE were exhibited at Tony Shafrazi’s in 1987. What was going on in the art world at the time you made these? How do you think this body of work related to Neo-Geo or other painting trends going on in New York at the time? Can you tell us about when and where they were made and how you arrived at this particular look?

MD: Well, by 1981 or ’82 it was pretty clear to anyone living in the East Village that we were in the midst of some sort of art boom. Condo’s career took off, and by 1984 he was selling out shows with Pat Hearn, who we both knew from Boston. Soon after, he moved to Europe, where he enjoyed even greater success. Things were happening really fast, at least for him and many, many others.

As for me, it was difficult making contacts, meeting artists who did the sort of work I was interested in. I visited André Emmerich Gallery (which is where I thought I belonged) frequently, always with slides in tow, though I never had the nerve to show them to anyone. Finally, at an East Village exhibition, I saw a red monochrome painting by Olivier Mosset. It was tough and uncompromising, and it was one color. This I understood.

Olivier Mosset
Untitled, 1970
Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 100 cm

I introduced myself to Olivier, who then introduced me to Steven Parrino. I ended up sharing a studio space with Steven for seven years.

Around the same time–1985 or 1986–I met Alan Uglow, Li Trincere, Max Gimblett and Barry X Ball. We did a fine group show at The Mission Gallery in the East Village. Soon after that I was in another group show with Olivier and Bill Beckley at Tony Shafrazi’s gallery. Tony offered me a two-person exhibition with James Nares the same year. As he was doing brisk sales with my work, I guess he felt comfortable enough to offer me the entire gallery. I had my first solo exhibition there in September 1987.

While preparing for that show, I knew I would have to pull out all the stops, treat art like a full-time job. I was at the studio by 9 a.m. every day, building my own shaped canvases, working with enamel paints, fiberglass, stainless steel sheets and whatever scraps I could afford from the surplus shops on Canal Street.

I started to experiment with surfaces, polishes and varnishes. I tried buffing and sanding different types of paint, but had trouble achieving the desired result. I wanted to make something that had a surface like a custom car, a surfboard, or a piece of lacquered furniture. I craved a California fetish finish, like a John McCracken sculpture, but I wanted it on a painting. It also had to be a shaped canvas that was informed by classic geometric painting. Most importantly, it could not look the least bit cynical. This was a tall order.

My carpentry skills at the time were primitive at best, plus I had no real tools or workspace. I realized I needed to up the production level to get the results I envisioned. After a few weeks of material trials, I ended up finding the polymer resin material that restaurant and bar owners use to coat the tops of tables. It worked perfectly, drying to a sleek mirrored surface. I then found a good carpenter who could make the shapes exactly as I wanted, down to the smallest detail.

Mark Dagley, Work in process, 1987

I would plot the shapes out on graph paper, then make a small cardboard maquette. A few of the designs were anthropomorphic, but most were non-referential. Color decisions were sequential, sometimes random. I worked on the cardboard maquettes until the finished wooden structures returned from the carpenter.

After finishing three or four of these works, I realized I needed quite a bit more space. I ended up subletting William Burrough’s Bunker on the Bowery from John Giorno during the summer of 1987 and was able to complete the entire exhibition there.

Mark Dagley, Studio view, The Bunker, 222 Bowery, August, 1987
Photo: Beth Phillips

DV: Op Art has been getting a lot of renewed interest and visibility lately. Recent museum and gallery exhibitions have thoroughly surveyed the movement, from its quasi-scientific origins in the 60s, through its Post-Structural deconstruction in the 80s, to its current incarnation. You participated in Post-Hypnotic, a 1999 traveling exhibition exploring the resurgence of optical effects in the work of an international group of artists. When did you begin using Op phenomena as a model for making new paintings? How does it  continue to generate new work?

MD: After the Shafrazi exhibition, I took a temporary studio in Cologne, Germany to prepare for an exhibition at the Hans Strelow Gallery in Düsseldorf. I painted stripes and dots on unprimed canvas, something I’d done a decade previously. I also started to make my own stretchers again.

Mark Dagley, No Title, 1989
Acrylic on unprimed canvas
Collection: Foundation Prini

I produced the dot paintings by standing on a ladder over the canvas, which was rolled out on the floor, and letting the thinned paint rain down on it: This produced an unintentional moiré effect. Though I found the results quite interesting, I never really pursued their implications, but I guess my involvement with Op Art started there.

After working through a series of eccentric handmade shaped canvases and a group of torqued monochromes (which I exhibited in New York, at Stephanie Theodore Gallery, following a second show with Strelow), I attempted to locate areas of surface and support that had been overlooked in painting. I wasn’t terribly excited by the properties of paint, as were many of the abstract and geometric artists I met in Germany. I had developed more of an affinity with Blinky Palermo, BMPT, the Zero Group and Concrete Art.

Mark Dagley, Radical Structures
Kunstverein St.Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland
21 August – 26 September 1993

The material qualities of the paint and its application became perfunctory for me. I really wanted that impersonal look, but, paradoxically, I wanted to achieve it painting by hand. Simultaneously–around 1990–I reduced my palette to red, yellow, blue, black and white. This was a little scary at first because, all the sudden, my work began to look like Mondrian knock-offs. But I could see ten or twenty paintings into the future, and I knew they’d never been done before, that this was unexplored territory.

I called these works Primary Sequences, as they were comprised of just that: a 12-inch red square, placed next to a 6-inch yellow square, then, next to that, a 3-inch square of blue, and so on. This led to a whole series of paintings based on sequences and systems. But one thing I felt was missing, or discarded from the foundation of 20th-century geometric art, was classical perspective, so I also started doing one-point perspective line paintings in primary colors. I immediately noticed that they had an optical effect. They reminded me of Raymond Loewy’s Shell logo and the shopping mall supergraphics I grew up with.

Raymond Loewy
Redesigned Shell logo, 1967

In 1995, after completing dozens of single-point perspective line paintings, I turned my attention to the dead center of a square canvas. My Corcoran training came in handy here. I began tracing dots in pencil with a circle template, as one long, spiral string. I started with the smallest hole that a pencil point would fit into, figuring I’d trace dots up to 1.5 inches. I don’t think I ever got that far.

It seemed that the drawing more or less made itself. After about a week, I had filled a 74 x 74 inch canvas completely. Then I painted the dots in: red, yellow, blue, red, yellow, blue… I knew from the start that there would have to be three of these paintings: one in primary colors, one in secondary, and one in black, white and gray. I still have to complete the one in secondary colors. Though they’re not difficult paintings to make, they’re extremely time-consuming.

Funny, I never set out to make Op Art. As far as my work is concerned, I much prefer the term systematic painting. The opticality is just the sexy part, the by-product of the real issue at hand, which is structure.

DV: Lastly, tell us about Abaton Book Company, which you run with your wife Lauri Bortz.

MD: I had my own record label, Tweet, for a brief time during the early 80s, and Lauri ran an independent film company and a small theater troupe in the late 80s, early 90s. We met in 1994, through George Condo, and launched Abaton Book Company in 1997, with a volume of Lauri’s one-act plays.

I’d always wanted to produce limited editions and artist books. Knowing so many interesting artists made it a natural move. We released a boxed set of twenty-five artist booklets called The Five and Dime, in celebration of the new millennium. Titles by Alix Lambert, Judith Fleishman, H.D. Martinez, Steven Parrino and me followed.

We expanded Abaton, adding a record label in 1999, which features singer/songwriters Marianne Nowottny, Julia Vorontsova, and Corbi Wright; jazz chanteuse Devorah Day; Indian classical singer/musician Veena Sahasrabuddhe; punk bands Shell, The Girls and Fuzzy Wuz She.

In 2003, we converted our garage into an art gallery, aptly titled Abaton Garage. We’ll be launching season five with a photo exhibition by Alix Lambert. There’s usually live music at Abaton Garage openings, mostly by artists on our label. And lots of food. Lauri always cooks up a storm.

Don Voisine is a Brooklyn-based painter and President of American Abstract Artists.

Blinky Palermo, Red, Yellow and Blue, 1975
Acrylic on aluminum, four parts, 26.7 x 147 x 0.3 cm

October 21, 2007 — January 20, 2008

The Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Kunstverein für die Rheinlande und Westfalen present the first comprehensive exhibition of Blinky Palermo’s work in Düsseldorf, Germany.  Palermo came to Düsseldorf in 1962 in order to study at the Academy initially under Bruno Goller and then under Joseph Beuys. He developed his unmistakeable abstract pictorial language here and later in the USA (1973-1976) that decisively extended the concept of the picture and explored a new relationship between composition and space.

Blinky Palermo, Flipper, 1970
Screenprint on paper in 2 parts, 33 x 35 inches each

April 5 — May 4, 2007

June 16-24, 2006

When Guy Goodwin re-stretched his painting C-Swing (1974) at my studio earlier this year it looked so good, that we decided to have a little show of his work. In the office, to keep his paintings company, Ulrike Müller has installed my collection of question mark paintings, and Dean Daderko has selected an illustrious group of lunch guests. Please join us for an opening reception on Friday, June 16 2006, from 6–9pm.

–David Reed

In the front studio:
Guy Goodwin: C-Swing (1974), Spine (1978), and Olive Oil (2006)

In the office:
Too Many Tear Drops
with a poem by Gregg Bordowitz
Richard Artschwager, Jessica Diamond, Richard Allen Morris, Ulrike Müller, Carl Ostendarp, Michael Reafsnyder, Scott Reeder, Al Ruppersberg, Rosa Hanna Scott

In the lunch room:
Guess who’s coming to lunch?
curated by Dean Daderko
Robert Barry, Stefan Eins, Rochelle Feinstein, Pam Fraser, Jeff Gauntt, Ron Gorchov, Mary Heilmann, Christine Heindl, Jasmine Justice, Lee Lozano, Klaus Merkel, Richard Allen Morris, Laura Owens, Blinky Palermo, Ruth Root, Al Ruppersberg, Alejandra Seeber, Haley Tompkins, Nicholas Wilder

reedstudio
506 Greenwich Street, Storefront (between Canal & Spring)
New York, NY 10013
212.431.3051