George Ortman, Sun Dance, 1997
Acrylic on bainbridge board
36 x 36 inches

January 14 – February 25, 2012

An exhibition surveying 62 years of the artist’s work.

George Ortman’s painted constructions of the 1950s and early 1960s are pioneering works. Their reductive geometry and modular color were widely seen as being at the forefront of young artists move away from abstract expressionism. Writing about the Whitney’s Young America 1960, Hilton Kramer noted that “There is only one artist [in the exhibition] who is equal to a museum showing: that is Mr. George Ortman.” Indeed, Ortman’s work was a particular inspiration to Donald Judd who saw it at the Stable Gallery and repeatedly cited its importance as an antecedent: “[In 1959] George Ortman was doing his best reliefs and had been working along that line for some time. Their worth has never been adequately acknowledged.” (Local History, Arts Yearbook 7, 1964)

In many ways Ortman’s early work forms a missing link between post-war abstraction and the geometric art of the 1960s. As such it fits neatly beside the occult assemblage of Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Lee Bontecou in a progression away from abstract expressionism towards something concrete and revelatory. Judd remarks in his seminal essay on the development of the new art of the 1960s, Specific Objects that “The work of Johns and Rauschenberg and assemblage and low-relief generally, Ortman’s reliefs for example, are preliminaries.” (Arts Yearbook 8, 1965) Interestingly, Ortman shares with Johns and Rauschenberg a type of quotidian surrealism, as well as ties to Dada. Ortman’s link to post-war Surrealism originates in his studies at Stanley William Hayter’s Atelier 17 in New York in 1949. The Dada connection comes via Duchamp, and is evident in the parallels between Ortman’s formal geomancy and chess. As Judd observes: “[Ortman’s constructions] seem to be games or models for some activity and suggest chance, from much through little, controlled and uncontrolled, operating on things both related and unrelated. They are one of the few instances of completely unnaturalistic art. They are concerned with a new area of experience, one which is relevant philosophically as well as emotionally.” (Local History, Arts Yearbook 7, 1964)

The current exhibition starts with Ortman’s first construction, Beginnings (1949), done while in Paris on the GI Bill. Beginnings clearly shows the artist’s assimilation of surrealist influence, taking Cornell’s boxes in a new, abstract/constructivist, direction. Journey of a Young Man (1957 is a sententious work marking Ortman’s transition from surrealism to purely geometric constructions. Like all of Ortman’s art it belies a furtive narrative figuration undergoing an analytical progression towards pure abstraction. Tales of Love (1959), the largest work in Ortman’s breakthrough 1960 exhibition at Stable Gallery, is the apogee of the relentless, reductivist constructions that Judd found so inspirational. Blue Diamond (1960) is Ortman’s most widely reproduced work and was a centerpiece of Toward a New Abstraction, the important 1963 exhibition at the Jewish Museum that defined then emerging post-painterly tendencies. (Here Ortman took equal place alongside Ellswoth Kelly, Frank Stella, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland.) In the 1970s, as a faculty member at Cranbrook Academy near Detroit, Ortman’s work acquired a riveting elegance. Constructions such as Woodward (1974) and Eye (1977) have the unified formal presence of the best post-war abstraction to come out of New York.

In the late 1980s and 1990s Ortman turned his eye toward Detroit, seeing in the city’s tragic decay themes that were familiar to him from his work at the Tempo Playhouse, the theater he cofounded in 1953 that was the first in America to present plays by Ionesco and Genet. Pilgrim and Jefferson Avenue are two major constructions from this period. Stark in their use of silver, white and graphite, they have a lucid mechanical ferocity bearing interesting comparison to the work of Lee Bontecou. Most recently, fascinated by the geometric possibilities presented by the intersection of four inclined planes, Ortman has been working on an ongoing series of free standing pyramidal forms.

Throughout his career, Ortman has made Imitations based upon classical and modern masterpieces. Included here are drawings for Heartbeat, Ortman’s first (1962) Imitation based on Matisse’s Piano Lesson, and a group of drawings from his study of Paolo Uccello’s Battle of San Romano (1965). These drawings emphasize the figurative and symbolic foundation of Ortman’s art, demonstrating the mechanics of his abstraction and showcasing his extraordinary talent as a draughtsman–an interesting aside for a geometric abstractionist shared by others of his generation such as Ellsworth Kelly.

George Ortman was born in 1926 in Oakland, California. In the early 1950s Ortman showed at the cooperative Tanager Gallery on Tenth Street, then in 1957 and 1960, at the Stable Gallery. Throughout the 1960s Ortman showed at the Howard Wise Gallery. The artist had a one-person exhibition at the Walker Art Center in 1965. In 1970 Ortman left to teach at the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan and stopped exhibiting in New York. The current show is George Ortman’s third exhibition since returning to New York in the 1990s. In 2001 this gallery presented a cycle of paintings from the 1980s based on Georges Seurat’s Models, and in 2006 an exhibition of 4 constructions and new cast sculptures.

Cordy Ryman, Pascal’s Fall (installation view), 2011
Acrylic and enamel on wood, 63 pieces
174 x 240 x 6 inches

November 12 – December 22, 2011

The work of Cordy Ryman takes to task the investigation of geometries free from rigorous ordering. His abstract reliefs – elevating commonplace materials such as wood, spray paint, glue, Velcro and staples – exist in the conceptual interstice of painting and sculpture. Layered with unconventional juxtapositions that at first appear naďvely assembled, his unpretentious, three-dimensional renderings become performative objects that shift in conversation between color theory, surface distortion, and an almost architectural consideration of space. Ryman’s unexpected methods of deconstruction and reconstruction call for closer examination of both traditional formalism, and contemporary fabrication.

Cordy Ryman was educated at the School of Visual Arts (NY). He has most recently been the subject of solo exhibitions at DCKT Contemporary, Conner Contemporary, Kavi Gupta Gallery, and Twig Gallery (Belgium). He is included in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art Miami, the Microsoft Art Collection, Raussmuller Collection (Switzerland) and the Speyer Family Collection (NY), among others.

Karl Benjamin, #31, 1965
Oil on canvas
26 x 3o inches

September 24 – December 24, 2011

Karl Benjamin did not set out to become one of the founding fathers of Hard Edge painting. His plan was to write. However, in 1950 while attempting to offer art instruction, along with reading and writing, to his classroom of sixth graders, Karl Benjamin discovered painting, switched his allegiance to the visual arts and the rest is history.

In the course of his lengthy career, Benjamin and his luminous, grid-based paintings have earned accolades from colleagues, collectors and curators alike. The artist ’s thirty-year trajectory, catalogued in this exhibition, could serve as a guide for the evolution of American abstract painting. Benjamin’s meticulous exploration of color, his intuitive understanding of complex spatial relationships and the sheer joie de vivre with which each canvas announces itself to the viewer are, in equal parts, impeccable and irresistible.

In a 2008 interview, Benjamin commented, “I wasn’t thinking about a career in art; I just wanted to make beautiful paintings.” This selection of paintings should persuade anyone with eyes that the artist has more than succeeded. He has triumphed.

Louis Stern Fine Arts is the exclusive representative of the artist, and is pleased to present the exhibition as a participating gallery in the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945-1980. The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue with text by Suzanne Muchnic.

Julius Shulman (1910–2009), photographer, Pierre Koenig, architect, Stahl House (Case Study House #22), Los Angeles, 1960 © J. Paul Getty Trust.

October 1, 2011 – June 3, 2012

This exhibition is the first major study of California midcentury modern design. With more than 300 objects—furniture, ceramics, metalwork, fashion and textiles, and industrial and graphic design—the exhibition examines the state’s role in shaping the material culture of the entire country. Organized into four thematic areas, the exhibition aims to elucidate the 1951 quote from émigré Greta Magnusson Grossman that is incorporated into the exhibition’s title: California design “is not a superimposed style, but an answer to present conditions…It has developed out of our own preferences for living in a modern way.”

James Turrell, “Wedgework V,” 1975
Fluorescent light, dimensions variable

September 25, 2011–January 22, 2012

The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego is pleased to announce its most ambitious exhibition to date, Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface. This exhibition is on view at the Museum’s La Jolla and downtown San Diego locations from September 25, 2011 through January 22, 2012.

In the 1960s and 70s, light became a primary medium for a loosely-affiliated group of artists working in Los Angeles. Whether by directing the flow of natural light, embedding artificial light within objects or architecture, or by playing with light through the use of transparent, translucent or reflective materials, these artists each made perception itself the subject of their work. Key examples of this approach include immersive environments by Bruce Nauman and Eric Orr, each of which each produce extreme retinal responses; the otherworldly glow of a Doug Wheeler light environment; a spatially perplexing light piece from James Turrell’s Wedgework series, and the subtle sculpting of space with natural light by Robert Irwin.

In addition to artworks which literally claim the entire space of the room, the exhibition features a number of pieces that function as prisms or mirrors to activate their surrounding space. The properties of glass are explored in Larry Bell’s glass cubes and in paintings by Mary Corse which are embedded with tiny glass microbeads. The luminous and prismatic effects of cast or vacuum-formed resins and plastics are demonstrated with exceptional works by Peter Alexander, Ron Cooper, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, Helen Pashgian and De Wain Valentine. Lush pigmentation and supreme reflectivity combine in John McCracken’s lacquered sculptures to create bold objects which paradoxically melt into their environment by acting as mirrors.

Combining key works from the Museum’s collection with major loans from prominent public and private collections, the exhibition includes immersive light installations together with rare, ephemeral, and site-conditioned works, some seen for the first time in decades.

Phenomenal is accompanied by a lavishly illustrated 250-page scholarly catalogue co-published by MCASD and University of California Press. The first critical reader on this topic, the Phenomenal book is a key addition to literature on art made in Los Angeles during the vibrant decades of the 1960s and 70s. The book is edited by Robin Clark.

Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface is part of Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A. 1945–1980. This unprecedented collaboration, initiated by the Getty, brings together more than sixty cultural institutions from across Southern California for six months beginning October 2011 to tell the story of the birth of the Los Angeles art scene and how it became a major new force in the art world. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty.

Featured Artists
Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Ron Cooper, Mary Corse, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Bruce Nauman, Eric Orr, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, Doug Wheeler

Installation view

September 23 – November 12, 2011

Quint Contemporary Art presents an exhibition of the work of Peter Alexander, Mary Corse, and Robert Irwin.

Installation view.

September 17 – October 22, 2011

L&M Arts, Los Angeles is honored to present Way Out West, an exhibition of new fluorescent light tube sculptures by California based artist Robert Irwin. This will be the artist’s first commercial gallery show of new work in Los Angeles in over 40 years.

In this exhibition, Robert Irwin, a pioneering artist of the “Light and Space” movement, continues his ongoing interest in the perceptual qualities of light, experimenting with rhythm, texture, densities, temperature and tonal relationships. Irwin wraps the fluorescent tubes in as many as 13 gels to achieve a range of hues, and vertically mounts the lights in groups. The sculptures are organized in heights of four, six and eight feet ranging from three to twenty-seven fixtures on the wall. These works are meant to exist in several different states, including the off position, dramatically altering the compositions, mood and atmosphere of the surrounding environment. In each state, chromatic relationships change, temperatures go from warm to cool and back again, and the quality of light in the room changes. For this exhibition, the work will be shown in both daylight and artificial light, with both environments playing a crucial role, creating a dialogue with the light that radiates from within the work. Light tubes reflect upon each other, and the spaces between them allow the adjacent colors to refract, producing a vast range of hues. The artist will determine the state that each sculpture shall remain in for the duration of the exhibition.

Robert Irwin’s work can currently be viewed at the Getty Center for Los Angeles, the Pomona College Museum of Art as part of the “It Happened at Pomona” exhibition and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego in the Phenomenal: California Light, Space Surface exhibition.

Ken Weathersby, Time is a Diamond (detail), 2011

August 7 – September 25, 2011

Some Walls is pleased to present Time is the Diamond, an installation of very small works by Ken Weathersby, August 7, 2011– September 25, 2011.

Ken Weathersby is known for art works he describes as “meticulous, perceptually active paintings using tight geometric patterns” interrupted “with physical insertions, reversals, dissections or displacements. The painted patterns generate moiré effects, phantom color and elusive hints of space.”

Time is the Diamond comprises twenty-two small works in less than twelve linear feet—miniatures, actually—using many of the same motifs and interventions found in Weathersby’s larger paintings; the smallest measures approximately 2.5 x 1.5 inches, the largest just over 8 x 5 inches.

Time is the Diamond is the title of a song by the American band Low. The song’s dense, abstract, almost impenetrable lyrics have a folk quality, listing things the singer is not, or has lost, akin to the hybrid and transgressive qualities in Weathersby’s art that are ultimately resolved in his finished works:

If I’m not a lion
And I’m not an island
If time is the diamond
Well all right.

Weathersby’s most recent solo exhibition, Perfect Mismatch, was held at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn in 2010. Selected recent exhibitions include: The National Academy of Art Museum’s 183rd Annual: An Invitational Exhibition of Contemporary American Art, New York; Continuing Color Abstraction at The Painting Center, New York; Postconceptualism: the Malleable Object, Stamp Gallery, University of Maryland; and Visual Phrasing, Maloney Art Gallery, College of St. Elizabeth. He is the recipient of a Mid-Atlantic Arts / New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Painting.

Ken Weathersby grew up on the gulf coast of Mississippi. He received an MFA in Painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit and has lived in or near New York City since 1990.

Nancy White, #10 – Green Yellow, 2011

August 6-20, 2011

Jancar Jones Gallery recently moved to Los Angeles, CA from San Francisco, CA. The gallery is currently located at 506 Bernard Street in Chinatown, Los Angeles. From August 6-20, they will present a selection of recent works by Nancy White at their new location. The exhibition is by appointment only.

Eve Aschheim, Deluxe 3x, 2010
Gesso, graphite, and ink on mylar
17 x 12 inches

June 11 – July 31, 2011

Some Walls is pleased to present “Drawings & Photograms” by New York artist Eve Aschheim June 11, 2011– July 31, 2011.

Eve Aschheim’s approaches to image-making—drawings, photograms, and paintings—concern line and light, interior and exterior space, rhythm and pattern, and gesture and a sense of play conveyed using each medium’s unique processes and material. As a single body of work, Aschheim’s luminous, shimmering, intimate drawings and photograms evoke architectural and natural space, and affirm the value of the handmade, constructed, and seen. Each resulting image captures the presence and process of emotion, searching, and thinking; for the viewer, looking at the images provokes feeling, exploration, and thought. Aschheim’s assembled and constructed images retain a semingly contradictory sense of vulnerability, openness, and surprise.

Eve Aschheim is Senior Lecturer at the Visual Arts Program at Princeton University.

Work by Jered Sprecher.

July 15 – August 31, 2011

Jered Sprecher is at the forefront of a new generation of abstract painters who are revitalizing the practice. In his new series, Shadows of Friction, he draws from sources that are changing and evolving. His work shows images that are revealed as fragments in the midst of change, destruction, redefinition and restoration. He earned his MFA at the University of Iowa in 2002, and he is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include shows at Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York; Kinkead Contemporary, Los Angeles; Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston.

Keira Kotler, March 29 through May 27, 2011
Urethane and varnish on acrylic
18 x 18 inches

June 25 – July 30, 2011

Group show featuring work by Peter Alexander, Miya Ando, Richard Bruland, and Keira Kotler.

John McLaughlin, #15, 1961
Oil on canvas
60 x 42 inches

May 21 – July 16, 2011

Works by John McLaughlin and Roy McMakin on view at Quint Contemporary Art in La Jolla, California.

Erik Saxon, Untitled, 1973
Commercial Varathane paint and Rhoplex on canvas
24 x 40 inches

May 7 – June 11, 2011

MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce the exhibition Erik Saxon: Select Works, 1973-2011. This is the Manhattan-based painter’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will feature key works from seminal points in the artist’s oeuvre spanning the past forty years, including several never-before-seen grid, shaped, multi-panel, and monochrome paintings.

For the past four decades, Erik Saxon has produced rigorous abstract geometric work, including paintings, drawings, prints, and sculpture. Born and raised in San Francisco, California, Erik moved to New York in 1964, but returned to San Francisco in 1965 to earn his Masters degree. He permanently relocated to New York City in 1968. Between 1968-1973, he produced works that alternated between abstraction and abstract figuration. In 1973, he began exclusively making abstract work based on the grid format, initially using watercolor on paper and then industrial paint on raw canvas. One of Erik’s first abstract grid paintings, Untitled (1973, commercial Varathane paint and Rhoplex on canvas, 24 x 40 inches), will be included in the exhibition.

That same year Erik began experimenting with monochromatic works – a series of acrylic drawings consisting of white and off-white squares arranged into groups of three to five panels – but tabled the idea a year later focusing his attention instead on paintings organized around a nine square grid structure (3 rows x 3 columns). With the intention of exploring “all possible variations within the picture plane”, the new grid works contained lines, rectangular bars, and squares, as well as the three neutral (white, gray, black) and three primary colors (red, yellow, blue). The grid paintings Erik produced between 1974-1977 are a critical development and define his core concerns for the next three decades. The yellow, white, gray and raw canvas grid painting, Untitled (1975, acrylic, pencil and matte medium on canvas, 60 x 60 inches), will be on view in the exhibition.

In 1977, Erik returned to the idea of the monochrome. His first monochromes consisted of multiple square and/or rectangular panels joined together forming a single shaped painting. Several years later in 1982, he produced his first all-white painting, which was conceived as a fusion of “an interior white square with the picture plane of the painting”. Two key paintings from this five-year period, 4.W.S.1.OFF.W.R./D.CROSS_O/M_78-79 (1978-79, oil on masonite, 35 1/4 x 35 1/4 inches) and W.S.#2-6_O/L_82-3 (1982-83, oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches), will be included at the gallery.

For the past thirty years, Erik has experimented broadly with the concept of the monochrome. He has worked with a wide variety of shaped painting supports, including squares, rectangles, crosses, circles, and ovals. He has produced single panel paintings, as well as diptychs and triptychs. His paintings commonly featured layered surfaces sometimes involving up to thirty successive layers of paint, which according to the artist, “frees the paint from its support enabling it to become an independent surface”.

During this time, Erik also examined a painting’s relationship to the wall, the floor, its location within the exhibition space, and the viewer. Paintings are sometimes hung at an oblique angle to the floor or with the bottom edge of a painting positioned at eye level on the wall. In addition, he has analyzed the inherent tension between individual panels in a diptych or triptych, sometimes installing them abutted together horizontally or vertically, spaced apart at predetermined intervals, or positioned on the wall at a precise distance away from each other where the individual panels no longer relate. The exhibition will include two key works from this period, the black and yellow diptych BLK.RECT.+YEL.RECT.OB._O/L_09 (2009, oil on linen, 36 x 56 inches overall) and the new off-white egg-shaped painting P.2._OFF.W._O/L_11 (2011, oil on linen,19 x 15 inches).

Erik Saxon (b. 1941, San Francisco, CA, USA) has exhibited his work internationally for the past forty years, including Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. His work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at venues, such as Stark Gallery, Lorence/Monk Gallery, Florence Lynch Gallery (all NYC), Modernism (San Francisco, CA), Newspace (Los Angeles, CA), Galerie L’A (Liege, Belgium), Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA), Bowdoin College Museum of Art (Brunswick, ME), Cincinnati Museum of Art (Cincinnati, OH), Krannert Art Museum (Champaign, IL), Brevard Museum of Art and Science (Melbourne, FL), Sunrise Museum (Charleston, WV), Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston, SC), Wilhelm-Hack Museum (Ludwigshafen, Germany), Raum für Malerei, artothek, Kolnisches Stadt Museum (all Cologne, Germany), Kunstverein Arnsberg (Arnsberg, Germany), Museum Gegenstandsfreier Kunst (Landkreis Cuxhaven, Germany), Mondriaanhuis (Amersfoort, Netherlands), Museum of Modern Art (Belgrade, Serbia), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Esteban Vicente (Segovia, Spain), and Museo Cantonale d’Arte (Lugano, Switzerland).

Erik is most closely associated with the Radical Painting Group active in NYC during the 1970s and early 1980s. The group stressed a radical return to the core concerns of painting. The group’s other participants included artists Marcia Hafif, Dale Henry, Anders Knutsson, Joseph Marioni, Olivier Mosset, Phil Sims, Doug Sanderson, Susanna Tanger, Frederic Matys Thursz, Merrill Wagner, and Jerry Zeniuk, among others.

Erik’s work has been discussed and reviewed in publications, such as Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, Brooklyn Rail, Village Voice, New York Observer, New York Sun, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, and Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger (Germany). His paintings and drawings are included in many public and private collections internationally, including the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), UCLA Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA), Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA), Göteborg Museum of Art (Göteborg, Sweden), Museo Cantonale d’Arte (Lugano, Switzerland), and Museum of Modern Art (Belgrade, Serbia). His work has been collected by Wynn Kramarsky (NYC) and Giuseppe Panza (Varese, Italy).

In addition to his studio work, Erik has written extensively. His essays and criticism have appeared in exhibition catalogs worldwide and have been published in magazines, such as Artforum, Art in America, and Appearances, among others. Erik holds an MA and BA from the University of California, Berkeley, CA.

PRESS
Erik Saxon at MINUS SPACE, by Sarah Schmerler, Art in America, October 2011
Erik Saxon at MINUS SPACE, by Sarah Schmerler, Sarah Schmerler blog, June 3, 2011
Erik Saxon’s Rigorous Yet Playful Abstraction, by Sharon Butler, Two Coats of Paint blog, May 13, 2011
Erik Saxon, Eva Lake blog, May 11, 2011
artBUZZ: On and Off the Grid, by Angela Basile, Brooklyn (The Borough), May 4, 2011

SUPPORT
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
98 4th Street, Room 204 (Buzzer #28), Brooklyn, NY 11231
between Hoyt + Bond | Carroll Gardens / Gowanus
Hours: Fridays & Saturdays, 12-6pm, and by appointment
> directions

Douglas Melini, Splendor of the Sun and the Moon, 2008
Acrylic on canvas and wood
24 x 20 inches

April 23 – June 4, 2011

Sam Lee Gallery and co-curator Paul W. Evans are pleased to present Cries & Whispers, a group exhibition of 15 diverse artists whose practice centers on abstraction. Included in the exhibition are Jakob Christmas, William Conger, Jeff Gambill, Glenn Goldberg, Joanne Greenbaum, Hadley Holliday, Andy Kolar, Andrew Masullo, Douglas Melini, Robin Mitchell, John Pearson, Carl Smith, Andrew Spence, Misato Suzuki, and Laura Sharp Wilson. The gallery will host a reception for the artists on Saturday, April 23, from 6 to 9 pm.
What makes painting a cry and what makes painting a whisper? Or could a painting be both? Cries and Whispers—not a survey show by any means—probes these questions and looks at abstraction from a multi-faceted perspective, exploring the different ways in which visual devices are employed. The utilization of line, color, content and form is paramount. Each artist brings his or her own signature method to this genre through various strategies and ideas. Such notions intersect throughout the show, creating an engaging dialogue among the pieces. These works honor the solitary journey of art-making and the longing for communication.

Jennifer Faist, Carousel, 2010
Resin, oil, alkyd, and acrylic on wood
17 x 52 x 1.5 inches

April 23 – June 4, 2011

Jennifer Faist engages in a rigorous material process where color sets an emotional timbre and pattern anchors the conceptual and compositional core of the work. Faist begins her process on stacked plywood boards which are sanded, gessoed and then painted on with thick layers of paint. The patterns created in the first layer are then covered with thin applications of additional alkyd, oil and colored glazes which are sanded down to partially reveal portions of the subsequent layers. A clear epoxy resin serves as the final layer.

Faist’s perfectly smooth, reflective surfaces draw viewers into their vibrant, immeasurable depths. The meticulously crafted work recalls the Finish Fetish work of the 60′s, but Faist curbs pure materiality and infuses her work with personal resonance. Within layers of paint, Faist appropriates patterns from her own clothing which she associates with specific memories. The artist physically locks visual associations into the work under resin, creating relics of her past, while reflecting viewers’ own patterns and associations back into the work.

“While stylistic stereotypes fall short of describing the nuances in my work,” Faist states, “I do tend to satisfy my urge to feminize the Minimalists I admire by sweetening the Cool School’s clean aesthetic of finish and craftsmanship with the feminine touch of adornment…Rather than the dispassionate, ‘What you see is what you get’ maxim, my work embodies more the feminine habit of alluding to sentiment and memories.

Richard Serra, out-of-round X, 1999
Paintstick on handmade Hiromi paper
79 ½ x 79 inches
Private Collection

April 13 – August 28, 2011

Organized by the Menil Collection, the first retrospective of the drawings of American contemporary artist Richard Serra will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 13, 2011, through August 28, 2011. Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective traces the crucial role that drawing has played in Richard Serra’s work for more than 40 years. Although Serra is well known for his large-scale and site-specific sculptures, his work has also changed the practice of drawing. This major exhibition will show how Serra’s work has expanded the definition of drawing through innovative techniques, unusual media, monumental scale, and carefully conceived relationships to surrounding spaces. The exhibition, which includes many loans from important European and American collections, features 43 drawings and 28 sketchbooks from the 1970s to the present, as well as four films by the artist and a new, large-scale work completed specifically for this presentation.

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective follows the artist’s investigation of drawing as an activity both independent from and linked to his sculptural practice. The exhibition begins with his drawings from the early 1970s, when he drew primarily on paper with ink, charcoal, lithographic crayon, and black paintstick—a crayon comprised of a mixture of pigment, oil, and wax. Over time, his drawings increased in scale and evolved into autonomous works of art that challenged the notion of drawing as preparatory work.

In the mid-1970s, Serra made the first of his monumentally scaled Installation Drawings, some of which extend from floor to ceiling and are 10 to 20 feet wide. To make works such as Pacific Judson Murphy (1978), the artist attached Belgian linen directly to the wall and covered the entire surface with black paintstick. The Installation Drawings marked a radical shift, altering conceptions of what a drawing is and how it can interact with architecture. Serra’s drawings of this period control the space of entire rooms and alter perceptions of spatial relationships.

Serra has written of these drawings, “By the nature of their weight, shape, location, flatness, and delineation along their edges, the black canvases enabled me to define spaces within a given architectural enclosure. The weight of the drawing derives not only from the number of layers of paintstick but mainly from the particular shape of the drawing.”

In his drawings since the 1980s, Serra has continued to invent new techniques and to explore a variety of surface effects, primarily on paper. In 1989, Serra made a series of large diptychs. Several of the titles of these drawings—such as No Mandatory Patriotism and The United States Government Destroys Art—express the artist’s reaction to the removal and disassembly of his sculpture Tilted Arc, which was commissioned as a permanent work for New York City’s Federal Plaza. The exhibition will also include works from several of Serra’s drawing series made in the 1990s, such as Deadweights (1991), Weight and Measure (1994), Rounds (1996-97), and out-of-rounds (1999-2000).

In Serra’s recent drawings, such as the Solids series (2007-2008), the accumulation of black paintstick on paper is extremely dense and nearly the entire surface of the paper is covered in a layer of viscous pigment. To make these drawings, Serra often pours melted paintstick onto the floor and then lays the paper on top of the pigment. The paintstick is transferred to the sheet by pressing a hard marking tool onto the back of the paper.

As part of the retrospective, Serra has created a site-specific installation drawing for the Metropolitan’s presentation, titled Union. The exhibition will also feature Elevational Weights, a new drawing series from 2010.

Complementing the drawings will be a presentation of the artist’s sketchbooks and four films made by the artist in 1968: Hand Catching Lead, Hand Lead Fulcrum, Hands Scraping, and Hands Tied.

Richard Serra (b. 1939, San Francisco, California) studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Santa Barbara, graduating with a B.A. in English literature. Serra then received an MFA from Yale University in 1964 and had one of his first New York exhibitions at the Leo Castelli Warehouse, in 1967. His work has been the subject of major exhibitions at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1977), Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris (1983), The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1986 and 2007), Serpentine Gallery, London (1992), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid (1992), The Drawing Center, New York (1994), Dia: Chelsea, New York (1997), Guggenheim Bilbao (2005), and the Grand Palais, Paris (2008), among other museums.

Serra has received numerous awards and accolades for his artistic achievements. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has received honorary doctorates from Yale University and other universities. In 2008 he was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters of the French Academy and was decorated with the Order of the Arts and Letters of Spain. He received the Praemium Imperiale for Sculpture from the Japan Art Association in 1994, the Orden Pour le mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste in 2002, and the Prince of Asturias Award for the Arts in 2010.

Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective is curated by Bernice Rose, Chief Curator, Menil Drawing Institute and Study Center; Michelle White, Associate Curator, The Menil Collection; and Gary Garrels, Elise S. Haas Senior Curator Painting and Sculpture, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The presentation of the exhibition at the Metropolitan is coordinated by Magdalena Dabrowski, Special Consultant in the Museum’s Department of Nineteenth-Century, Modern, and Contemporary Art.

The 176-page exhibition catalogue features 160 illustrations and essays by Bernice Rose, Michelle White, Gary Garrels, and Magdalena Dabrowski, as well as contributions by Richard Shiff, the Effie Marie Cain Regents Chair in Art at the University of Texas at Austin; and Lizzie Borden, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and writer. Also included in the catalogue are: Serra’s Notes on Drawings; an illustrated chronology related to the artist’s drawing production; a selected exhibition history; and a selected bibliography. The catalogue is published by The Menil Collection and distributed by Yale University Press.

Nancy White, #8 (Emerald Green), 2011
Acrylic on paper mounted board
7 x 8.5 inches

March 23 – April 23, 2011

Jancar Jones Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibit of new work by Bay Area artist Nancy White. The show will include a number of acrylic paintings on paper mounted board. This will be her second solo exhibit with the gallery.

In her new body of work White continues to explore the perceptual relationship between what is painted and what the eye constructs. By using matte, closely valued colors, the paintings can appear almost monochromatic; the geometric constructions within, visually elusive. The adjacent triangular forms that make up the small compositions simultaneously collapse and expand the pictorial space, shifting and unfolding at varying rates of speed due to their varied size and color density. As a result of this kind of formal examination, White proposes a harmonious dichotomy in which minimalist objects can emerge out of complex compositions and visa versa.

Nancy White’s work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Takada Gallery, San Francisco and recently in group exhibitions at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary, San Jose, CA; Higgins Art Gallery, Barnstable, MA; the Pacific Northwest College of Art, Portland, OR; the Los Gatos Art Museum, Los Gatos, CA; Busdori, Tokyo, Japan; and ParisConcret, Paris, France. Her work was also included in a series of traveling exhibits that originated at Weltraum26, Munich, and traveled to Pharmaka, Los Angeles, and Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, CA.

Tony Delap, Extra Cross

March 12 – April 9, 2011

Exhibition of works by Tony Delap and Ruth Pastine at Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, California.

Kris Chatterson, Blue Copper, 2011
60 x 66 inches

February 19 – March 26, 2011

Western Project is proud to present the second solo exhibition of paintings by Kris Chatterson. Living and working in New York, the artist has created a body of work using printing, painting, digital imaging and iPhone drawings. Clipping and selecting gestures from previous prints, drawings and paintings, Chatterson excavates his past; a kind of digital surgery and recombination process. He presents the natural calligraphic gesture as synthetic, abstract elements; transforming the physical object-ness of the mark into non linear spatial compositions. The results are a kind of futuristic weather; informed by static patterns – both visual and audio; and enhanced by iPhone drawings as familiar yet displaced marks. Chatterson’s images seem to map immense territories or conversely, unseen microcosms. They reference his interest in fractals; beginning with his approach of building the images from a matrix to find unlimited possible combinations of forms. But akin to Rauschenberg, Lichtenstein and Warhol, Chatterson uses repetition, and a lo-fi printing to construct his paintings. The messy production of his printing and rubbing contrast with his high tech realms; visually reminiscent of Stella’s work from the mid 1980′s, or the haunting emotional tones of Kubrick’s film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. The paintings provide a mirror of the world of destruction and creation we are all a part of; as formal inventions they evidence the short distinctions between the physical and the abstract world of phenomena – the difference, being merely language and concept.