"I was aware of op as a historical movement of course; I was an art history major at Columbia before deciding to move into fine art. And op is one of the most distinguishable styles out there."
A Romance of Many Dimensions is comprised of nine artists/painters who share at least two things: their work expands the idea of dimensionality past the exactitude of two and three- dimensional space, and, they have had all been interviewed by Brent Hallard.
Gifting Abstraction establishes an intimate economy within Soho20Chelsea gallery in which abstract objects have not yet turned into objectified commodities. The gift economy paradigm recognizes that there is value outside market forces, and that the gift renders forces and riches of its own.
Participating Artists: Clary Stolte, Richard van der Aa, René van den Bos, Iemke van Dijk, Brent Hallard, Henriëtte van 't Hoog, Dirk Jan Jager, Peter Luining, Els Moes, Jan van der Ploeg, Machiel van Soest, John Tallman, Tilman, Vosenvanderveen, Jan Maarten Voskuil, Guido Winkler
Installation view February 14 – April 5, 2011 Artists include: Pam Aitken (au) Christoph Dahlhausen (de) Caroline de Lannoy (be/uk) Matthew Deleget (us) Daniel Göttin (ch) Billy Gruner (au) Brent Hallard (jp/us) Clemens Hollerer (a) Andrew Huston (us) Sarah Keighery (au) Roland Orépük (fr) Charles Payan (fr) Jacek Przybyszewski (pl/fr) Paul Raguenes (fr) Giles Ryder (au) Sato Satoru (jp/fr) Karen Schifano (us) Bogumila Stroja (pl/fr) Tilman (de) Richard van der Aa (nz/fr) Jan van der [...]
Don Voisine, Tricoteuse, 2010 Oil on wood 17 x 18 inches January 6 – February 12, 2011 This is the fourth January group exhibition in a series focusing on aspects of abstraction. In this instance, it is an examination of the use of planarity in painting, sculpture, and photography. Work in the exhibition ranges from deceptively simple, geometric work that consciously embraces the flatness of the picture plane, to those using complex interactions of planar [...]
December 3, 2010 – January 15, 2011 Informal Relations: Contemporary works on paper curator Scott Grow selected 32 artists from the United States, Germany, Spain and Japan to focus on the diversity of practices within painting and abstraction today. The exhibition’s title refers to kind the “informal relations” artists have with one another, their predecessors, with the modernist tradition, the future, and even with their own work. While works on paper may stand as finished [...]
Kate Beck, Anxieties and Alienations, 2010 Poured oil, enamel and powdered graphite on aluminum 89 x 184 inches October 28 – December 11, 2010 Pelavin Gallery is proud to announce a solo exhibition of recent work by american artist, Kate Beck. this show will include large scale poured oil paintings and graphite drawings on aluminum panel. this will be Beck’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, and in New York city. In this new body [...]
Installation view thru October 23, 2010 “I’ve chosen artists’ work that I feel share something of a fetish with/in the production/object, particularly based on an aesthetic predisposition that can run formally, culturally, adding the social/personal. How I personally interpret this is with a Tokyo sensibility, how Japanese respond to objects and their placement, their positioned sense of worth, a cuteness, an austere vs. touch. The exhibition consists of individual pieces, multiples, or artists books, which may sit on the [...]
Works from the 25 – 25 IS (2010) on the floor at SNO (l to r, t to b) Tilman, Tallman, Heerkens, Hallard, Hsiao, Arts, Voskuil, Winkler, Andrews, Roux, Dahlhausen, Van Der Graaf, Deleget, Van Der Aa August 7-29, 2010 Solo Installations Guido Winkler & Iemke van Dijk 25 -25 IS Box The 25 – 25 IS box contains work of 25 artists at 25 x25 cm. The edition consists of 75 boxes. Available at [...]
Clary Stolte, CS_008 MODEL 003 overview, 2006 Galerie van den Berge, Goes, the Netherlands Brent: At some level an artwork needs to quench the desire – the need to know what something is. But also, it shouldn’t stop there. In your case what is ‘known’ is a shape. You generally use the square and it is often imbued with the hues around white. Robert Ryman used a square because it took away the need to [...]
Brent: While artist-in-residence in the most western point of Ireland, Achill Island, you tapped in a description of the landscape: Dramatic, With Cliffs, An Ocean, And Totally Isolated. This is your work: my first impression. There is Nature in your pieces. And it took a tough wind and a heavy sea to set this all in motion. I see firm – more than firm, hard. Hard material that has cuts, often just a few. The [...]
Richard Bottwin, Facade #5, 2009 Wood, Acrylic Paint, Textured Acrylic Sheet 15 x 15 x 4.5 inches “Brent: As a sculptor you work fairly pure, neither adorning pieces with mounts nor placing your presentations on pedestals. If a “work” sits on the floor and only grows to somewhere around or below the knees, well, that is where it sits. You suspend. In this case the body becomes very aware of its own mechanisms; how it [...]
“Brent: In “Treble II” you have an envelope-proportioned structure that has a fold but not like an envelope. There is a corner missing from one side: And a corner protruding from the other. The whole thing is one sheet of color, and of two forms… how did that come about? Connie: In the “Treble” pieces I’m working with parts of a whole, hence the single color. As to whether these parts become a single entity [...]
Don Voisine, Chemical Moment, 2009 Oil on wood, 16×17 inches “Brent: Upon entering the gallery, your first show on the West Coast, San Francisco, Gregory Lind, immediately you become aware of all that is color. Oddly it is not the black that pushes its presence first. But like a good friend, faithful, the blacks unfold at a different speed, which require the intimate. If dark be the turbine then color is the outwardly expressive, and is [...]
Work by Brent Hallard November 12 – December 19, 2009 An international, visual conversation between abstract painters; a traveling, transformable series of shows. Exhibiting artists – Kasarian Dane, Stephan Fritsch, Brent Hallard, Leonhard Hurzlmeier, Robin McDonnell, Mel Prest, Richard Schur, Nancy White, John Zurier Meridian Gallery is pleased to present TRANS: form | color the San Francisco manifestation of a series of international traveling shows by nine artists from Japan, Germany and the United States [...]
Installation view at Non Objectif Sud, France, 2009 Brent: A drawing dated 1978, Untitled, chalk on paper, has a pair of identical penciled or conté grids which you use to make a series of what appear to be perfect arcs; there are finger marks or smudges; some arcs are taken out. The arcs appear to form some shape, allude to volume, but never really do. What I see is a point where you stopped. Was [...]
Brent: Finding. You come out of a bit of a painting history; gesture; hints of constructive; a kind of record keeping; painting that pays attention to relationship more than heroics, though the mark and scale suggests that’s where you were initially coming from? Richard: Yes, I do feel that what I do comes out of, and actually continues within, a history of painting. I trained as a painter initially during the early 80s in Christchurch, [...]
Brent: You have a penchant for travel, often for the more exotic places on this globe. You return home, go to the studio, and take out your notes… what are these notes? Mel: I like to be completely immersed while I’m traveling—so this means not putting a frame/ lens/ color on paper between the experience and myself. Sometimes I take little snapshots with my phone, or quickly record video of small moments with my cheap [...]
“Brent: Pop, peek-a-boo, poking around, of color that is not of this world, though worldly set in architectural places that can eat up the logic of their interior. Indeed you have for lunch many of the preconceptions of the formal. Your sense of order of space and how you color it physical is full of humor often playing up to our own inquisitiveness, how we are likely to navigate – how we and our body [...]
Our third VIEWLIST exhibition is conceived by New York painter Karen Schifano.
The word “inspire” (originally meaning “to infuse with breath”) is a verb, but can also transform itself into a noun or adjective. It’s very active, and yet also implies being receptive, even demands openness, a readiness to receive, and a sharpening of perception and awareness. From one thing, there is a direct connection to another thing, a kind of touch that is nurturing, rich and full of promise. Potential becomes realization; we wake up rejuvenated, re-energized, and ready for action.
Brent Hallard: Out of location, a thing found – wonders in ways that form a new thing, in a different location – this is generally how I sense your various projects working. Patricia Zarate: It is my experience of a location or an object in a place that is important to me. I think that I’ve been concerned with taking an experience – a place in time, perception – a feeling or idea and translating [...]
Works by Brent Hallard, Richard Roth, Henriëtte van ‘t Hoog Opens June 27, 2009 During July, ParisCONCRET presents work by three contemporary artists who push, gently, against the notion that painting is a strictly 2 dimensional proposition: Brent Hallard (au/jp), Richard Roth (us), Henriëtte van ‘t Hoog (nl).
Brent: Color scales, gray scales, drums, unwrapped columns, the feel of folds, all different measures of light that sometimes manifest as light ‘actually’, though all together register as interest in how things unfold, expose, and fold back – that draw attention to form while somewhat masquerading with it – Linda, what is the common thread that runs through your work? Linda: Interesting that you refer to my work as folds, literal, or as a manner [...]
Brent Hallard, Spa-t_kiss, 2009 Japanese acrylic resin on plastic paper, mounted on layers (white-grey-white) of corrugated plastic June 6 – July 5, 2009 IS projects is pleased to announce a new project entitled Kosmos, featuring a selection of work by artists working with light and space: Brent Hallard, Jose Heerkens, Gilbert Hsiao, Caroline de Lannoy, and Giles Ryder.
Lynne Harlow, Four Kicks, 2005 Pair of plexiglas boxes, 4 x 24 x 24 inches Brent: What are you currently working on? Lynne: I’m working the way I most like to, doing several different things at once. I have just completed a site-specific piece for a group show, I’m playing around with painted balsa wood strips that I’m gluing into shapes and, most significantly, I’m preparing for a collaborative project coming up this [...]
Devin Powers, Untitled, 2008 Installati0n, enamel and latex on wall Brent: The structure of space, theoretical models such as n-space and the hyper-cube usually lose most of us even in adult life. However you had an interest in this as a child. How did this fascination arrive? Devin: Well, I was no child prodigy. In fact, I was born dyslexic. I did not learn how to read until around the forth grade and it [...]
Read the complete interview Brent Hallard: You have been working on areas of color; vertical or horizontal bands of either matte paint or gloss paint with sometimes both present in the one painting at the same time. The structure between two areas of color, you couldn’t really call it a line, though, well, in the material – a space where something stops and then something starts. You have used aluminum supports for some time [...]
April 28 – May 23, 2009 Since the late 1990s, Douglas Witmer’s paintings demonstrate an increasingly distilled sensibility related to surface and color. Intuitively combining simple geometric imagery, emphatic color, and subtle manipulation of the surface, his paintings are inquiries into the materiality of seeing, perception, feeling, and memory. In a recently published interview with the Tokyo-based artist Brent Hallard, Witmer said, “I want the present moment of seeing to be charged with the [...]
Brent: Of course the first impression I get with your collage work (we may as well start there) is that it rings Japanese: The color, the quirkiness, and freshness – the level and sense of reserve and adornment. Though that’s too simple. Quirkiness and perhaps freshness has been picked up, more fetishized, by western media, so we’ll leave that for a moment. And as you are not in Japan, and have settled in a [...]
Richard Roth, Full Cleveland, 2007 Flashe on Birch plywood 11 3/8 x 8 x 4 inches Brent Hallard: It seems to me that no matter where you position yourself to take these paintings in there are always two states forthcoming, though perhaps not always on view at the same time. Separately these different moods evoke, for example in ‘Full Cleveland’ or ‘Happy Hour’, the carnival and serene. When the two states mesh, it’s generally [...]
Works by Leo Hurzlmeir, Richard Schur & Brent Hallard (l to r) March 12 – May 2, 2009 Exhibiting artists: Kasarian Dane, Stephan Fritsch, Brent Hallard, Leo Hurzlmeir, Robin McDonnell, Mel Prest, Richard Schur, Nancy White, John Zurier Pharmaka is pleased to present “TRANS:formal” the Los Angeles manifestation in a series of traveling shows by nine artists from Germany, Japan and the United States who are all engaged in a dialogue about Abstraction [...]
Brent: Kate, your pencil line drawings, either vertical lines or horizontal, always not the two together [?]: The framing device, the format and its edge seem to create the plus minus balance. How do you work on them? I noticed on your homepage that you had an image of quite a large one sitting flat on a bench top. Kate: Shape is very intriguing to me and sets the scale for each piece, [...]
Installation view January 17 – February 7, 2009 ParisCONCRET’s inaugural exhibition “Pour faire simple”. Participating Artists: Pam Aitken, Daniel Argyle, Roger Bensasson, Joel Besse, Sanne Bruggink, Carola Bark, Christoph Dahlhausen, Julian Dashper, Rene Eicke, Billy Gruner, Brent Hallard, Hiroshi Harada, Tony Harding, Jose Heerkens, Sarah Keighery, Irene Kivinen, Vaclav Krucek, Arjan Janssen, Kate Mackay, Aldo Mengolini, Simon Morris, Antoine Nelen, Roland Orepuk, Charles Payan, Jacek Przybyszewski, Paul Raguenes, Alexandra Roozen, Marlene Sarroff, Clary Stolte, [...]
View of Kevin Finklea’s studio, Philadelphia, PA “Brent: Kevin, you sent a studio shot of your new pieces. I can see how they fit with the flatter paintings, and what this new wood and paint work is doing. You mentioned that these pieces come about much quicker. Have you been going through a process of redefining time in your work? Do you think that changes a lot of things? Or is it that you [...]
December 12, 2008 – January 9, 2009 Also, be sure to catch a recent interview with Richard Schur: Midnight Run: Interview with Richard Schur, by Brent Hallard, Visual Discrepancies blog
Douglas Witmer, How Soon Is Now?, 2008
Karen Schifano, Coming Soon, 2008 Oil on canvas, 37 x 48 inches
April 23 — May 12, 2008 Includes artists Tom Benson, Lynne Harlow, Linn Meyers, Philomene Pirecki, Devin Powers, Mel Prest, Karen Schifano, Nancy White & Brent Hallard.
