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Escape from New York, Curated by Matthew Deleget, The Engine Room, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealandposted April 22nd, 2010
Mark Dagley, Final Sequence, 2007 April 22 – May 8, 2010 The Engine Room MINUS SPACE is delighted to announce the group exhibition Escape from New York at The Engine Room, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, from April 22 – May 8, 2010. Curated by Matthew Deleget, the exhibition surveys reductive strategies by 29 artists living in and around New York City. Each artist will present a single small work, as well as an open letter to the local community of artists. Escape from New York originated at Sydney Non Objective, Sydney, Australia, in 2007, and later traveled to Curtin University in Perth in 2008 and Project Space Spare Room, RMIT University in Melbourne in 2009. Participating Artists: Also on view at The Engine Room: Collective Monochrome: Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery. 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! Kevin Finklea: Memories Are Uncertain Friends, Margaret Thatcher Projects, New York, NYposted April 9th, 2010
Installation view March 4 – April 17, 2010 “Two years ago I entered my woodshop to make painted wooden objects once again. I had left object making for pure painting in the year 2000. In returning to the objects, I realized the importance of making work as unfettered of past experience as possible. It quickly became evident that there was no need to repeat myself. I wanted to make painted forms as directly as I could with no narratives, memories or other past histories attached to the process; as I realized this merely added a burden of expectation to the work. The pieces simply lost their fresh directness when I tried to bring something from the past into to the present process. My guiding rule became: glue it, screw it and paint it. To facilitate this I used materials I had already cut from former projects. Pieces of crates and lumber remaining from completed works all figured into the making of the new pieces. I actively let these remainders suggest the form of what I made. Painting was done utilizing paint already mixed from former works. There was no need to repeat decisions where form and color were concerned. While this could easily appear as trendy recycling; it was the freeing up of my work processes that this provided that galvanized it as my current studio approach. Here materials produced for former works were remade and remodeled into completely novel contexts to further my interests in color and balance.” – Kevin Finklea VIEWLIST: Bulletin Board: Inspiration Information, Conceived by Karen Schifanoposted July 21st, 2009
VIEWLIST is MINUS SPACE’s new online project space where we invite artists and others to curate a visual essay of images. VIEWLIST exhibitions are experimental and usually thematic, and can include art works spanning various time periods, movements, and geographic locations. Exhibitions may also include ideas and images from disciplines outside of the visual arts. With VIEWLIST, we’ve created a venue that focuses exclusively on ideas, a kind of idealized curatorial space, where exhibition budgets, loans and acquisitions of art works, timelines, and all other logistics are set aside. Our third viewlist exhibition is conceived by New York painter Karen Schifano.
Bulletin Board: Inspiration Information* 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. This group of inspirational flotsam and jetsam from our homes and studios is incredibly varied, running the gamut from a poetic quote to the restoration of a house, from the image of a computer desktop to strips of colored tape on a wall. In some instances, there’s a surprising leap from the image seen here to the finished work, in others there is a clear and recognizable relationship. I hope that as you are intrigued by an image, you will click on it to reveal the caption or thoughts of the artist, and then go to the individual websites linked to each name. Through a dialogue about how the mysterious process of getting from A to B or even Z unfolds for each of us, new avenues of search can open up, and we can be re-inspired by this “Inspiration Information”. * by Shuggie Otis
Participating Artists (left to right, row by row): Stephen Maine | Richard Bottwin | Paul Corio Joanne Mattera | Kevin Finklea | Billy Gruner & Sarah Keighery Linda Arts | Erik Saxon | Henry Brown Rory MacArthur | Melanie Crader | Matthew Deleget Daniel Argyle | Li-Trincere | Chris Ashley Linda Francis | Sylan Lionni | Shinsuke Aso Douglas Melini | Brent Hallard | Lynne Harlow Guido Winkler | Michael Zahn | Karen Schifano Lynne Eastaway | Daniel Göttin | Simon Ingram Daniel Feingold
Minimal Variety Forms, Conny Dietzschold Gallery, Sydney, Australiaposted June 23rd, 2009
Kevin Finklea June 20 – August 5, 2009 Participating Artists: Escape from New York, Curated by Matthew Deleget, Project Space Spare Room, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australiaposted May 8th, 2009
May 8-29, 2009 RMIT University School of Art and Sydney Non Objective present contemporary non-objective practice from MINUS SPACE New York. A survey of reductive strategies by artists living in and around New York City. Presenting a single work from each artist, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with RMIT Non Objective. The exhibition originated at Sydney Non Objective in 2007, and later travelled to Curtin University in Perth in 2008. Participating Artists SUPPORT MINUS SPACE extends a heartfelt thanks to artists David Thomas and Billy Gruner for bringing the show to Melbourne! Additional thanks to Daniel Argyle for his assistance.
Non-Objectif Sud 2009 Fundraiser, Gary Snyder Project Space, New York, NYposted April 21st, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009, 6-8pm Wine bar and hors d’oeuvres Gary Snyder Project Space for inquiries please call 646 325 4581 Tickets Raffle Artists: * List in formation Special thanks to Susan Madden, John Melick and Gary Snyder for their assistance. If you are unable to attend and would like to make a fully tax deductible contribution, Non-Objectif Sud Non-Objectif Sud is a non-for-profit 501(c) (3), all financial contibutions are tax deductible Minus Space at P.S.1 Extendedposted January 22nd, 2009
Installation in cafe space Exhibition in cafe space continues until May 2009. (Boiler Room exhibition closed on January 26, 2009.)
MINUS SPACE The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary. Participating Artists Ongoing Performance A List of Things: Interview with Kevin Finklea, Visual Discrepancies blog, by Brent Hallardposted January 9th, 2009
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 have just redefined time? Kevin: The new works you see in the studio shot are essentially plywood and wood reliefs. I make them very quickly in an attempt to free myself from the often-laborious process of getting a painting surface prepped. I paint them rather quickly to maintain this spirit of freeing myself up in the studio. Here I’ll note I don’t see this as some fantasy of freedom on my part. I’d say being free is a completely romantic notion and there is no such thing: But I digress. Let me stay on point…” Minus Space, Curated by Phong Bui, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / A Museum of Modern Art Affiliate, Long Island City, NYposted October 19th, 2008
Exhibition poster October 19, 2008 – May 4, 2009 (Daniel Göttin’s ceiling work in the cafe continues through summer 2009) We are delighted to announce our exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, an affiliate of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. P.S.1 is one of the oldest and largest non-profit arts centers in the United States solely devoted to contemporary art. The exhibition is curated by artist, Brooklyn Rail publisher, and P.S.1. Curatorial Advisor Phong Bui, and includes the work of 54 artists from 14 countries. The exhibition marks MINUS SPACE’s 5th anniversary. We greatly thank curator Phong Bui and the remarkable staff at P.S.1, the participating artists and their galleries, and our generous donors, whose financial support made this exhibition possible. Participating Artists Ongoing Performance Interview Press / Blogs MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / MoMA, Abstract Contemporary Art Blog, December 18, 2008 Top Ten 2008, by Jerry Saltz, Artnet Magazine, December 15, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10) The Year in Art: The Top Nine Shows (and One Event), by Jerry Saltz, New York Magazine, December 7, 2008 (MINUS SPACE is cited in #10) Michael Brennan at 210 Gallery and P.S.1, by Paul Corio, November 16, 2008 Interview with Simon Ingram / MINUS SPACE exhibition at P.S.1, New York, Vernissage TV, November 10, 2008 MINUS SPACE, by Eva Lake, November 10, 2008 MINUS SPACE at P.S.1, The James Kalm Report, November 2, 2008 Update, Henri Art Magazine, November 1, 2008 Reductive Art at P.S.1, by Jon Meyer, October 25, 2008 Gallery Credits Additional Credits
Group Show, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PAposted February 2nd, 2008
Kevin Finklea (left) & Richard Bottwin (right) February 1-29, 2008 A group exhibit of selected gallery artists, featuring paintings, drawings, sculptures and installation by: Isabel Bigelow, Nancy Blum, Richard Bottwin, Kay Hwang, Joseph Hu, Kevin Finklea, Franco Mueller, Margaret Murphy, Jackie Tileston and Julie York. The show will also include invited artist Sara Hughes. Kevin Finklea: I Know What I Want and I’m Certain I Can’t Have It, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, PAposted September 24th, 2007
September 24 — October 27, 2007 Escape from New York, Curated by Matthew Deleget, Sydney Non Objective, Sydney, Australiaposted August 3rd, 2007
August 3 – September 2, 2007 A group exhibition surveying reductive strategies by artists living in and around New York City. Each artist will present a single work, as well as an open letter to the artist community affiliated with Sydney Non Objective. Participating Artists: SUPPORT
Letters Soledad Arias > view letter Richard Bottwin > view letter Sharon Brant > view letter Michael Brennan > view letter Bibi Calderaro > view letter Mark Dagley > view letter Gabriele Evertz > view letter Daniel Feingold > view letter Kevin Finklea > view letter Linda Francis > view letter Zipora Fried > view letter Julio Grinblatt > view letter Lynne Harlow > view letter Gilbert Hsiao > view letter Andrew Huston > view letter Steve Karlik > view letter Daniel Levine > view letter Sylvan Lionni > view letter Rossana Martinez > view letter Juan Matos Capote > view letter Manfred Mohr > view letter Karen Schifano > view letter Analia Segal > view letter Edward Shalala > view letter Robert Swain > view letter Li-Trincere > view letter Don Voisine > view letter Douglas Witmer > view letter part 1 / letter part 2 Michael Zahn > view letter Victory for Tyler: Alumni Exhibition Series, Painting 2007, Ice Box Project Space, Philadelphia, PAposted April 5th, 2007
Kevin Finklea, Shift 5, 2005 April 13-29, 2007 An alumni exhibition to benefit Tyler exhibitions and public programs, features new paintings by MS artist Kevin Finklea. The Legacy of Agnes Martin: A Collection of Thoughts by Artistsposted December 18th, 2004
Agnes Martin, by Steve Karlik I went for a walk yesterday; a thin veil of snow cloaked the sidewalk. At once, grids became apparent. The accumulation of packed snow in the concrete’s seams made opaque grids, grids that were again defined by planes of less dense, more transparent layers of snow that covered the higher surfaces. The combination of these lines and planes brought me back to painting and why painting has significance for me. Reason, logic, the man made: the systems and structures within which we navigate that need to be expressed because we navigate them. I saw what I needed to think about. Where the snow began to melt the planes fell away and the grids softened, I was reminded, as I am with Agnes Martin’s work, that with structure there is always the poetic that defines it.
Agnes Martin, by Kevin Finklea “I hope I have made it clear that the work is about perfection as we are aware of it in our minds but that the paintings are very far from being perfect — completely removed in fact — even as we ourselves are.” This is the opening of the Notes section of Agnes Martin’s Writings/Schriften (1991, Hatze Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern, Germany). I found myself opening this book for the first time in many years. This book essentially replaced the scattered notes, xeroxes and catalog quotations I had gathered over the years from Agnes Martin. I held on to this and Profile: Agnes Martin (vol. 1, no. 2, March 1981, Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago, Illinois). While there is much that I can say about her work that was and remains important to me; it was her writing and interviews that were of the greatest use to me as a young artist. Her ruminations on investigation, truth and perfection are absolutely peerless. My recent interview with MINUS SPACE suddenly sprang to mind. I recalled saying that nothing I paint is perfect. I then used the word approximation to further describe my work’s perceived perfectness. I have to admit a wave of embarassment came over me. While I felt momentarily like a plagerist, I soon realized that I had actually internalized and put into practice much of what Martin had to say about painting. It is employing this sense of self-analysis and reflection that was Martin’s greatest contribution to non-objective painters. I can not encourage young non-objective painters enough to read what she had to say. I offer the following from Profile: Agnes Martin: “The work of artists is an investigation into truth, and you’re going to see it in your mind, you own mind.”
Thoughts on Agnes, by Douglas Witmer There was record flooding in south central Pennsylvania, where I grew up, in the aftermath of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. I was too young to remember the event, but the phrase “flood of Agnes” was often spoken in my childhood. I didn’t know Agnes was a woman’s name. The sound of it definitely left an impression. This is an aside, though… I long fancied making a visit to Taos to visit Agnes Martin. I read she took visitors. I never knew what I would ask or say, though. Words tend to drop away for me when it comes to her work. I believe I did not actually “see” the first Agnes Martin painting I was exposed to. It was likely “The Rose,” which sometimes hangs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the time was probably in the late 1980s. It took interacting with the work of my mentor Warren Rohrer, who shared affinities with Agnes, for my consciousness to be opened. I’ve begun to think that’s how some work is — invisible until its viewer is ready to see. In my upbringing I was encouraged to “be in the world but not of the world” and this is definitely a feeling I got from Agnes’ work. The feeling was bolstered as I learned more about her life and writing. The story of her move to the desert, building a house by hand (one account made it sound like she began by putting adobe around her camper and worked outward from there) and of her “quitting” painting for the better part of a decade: I find all of that an inspiring example of taking an alternative path. I wrestle personally, though, with the viability of that kind of asceticism for an artist of my generation. Seeing her early work at Dia:Beacon this past fall was a true highlight. Whereas her gridded paintings could at times seem a closed system, cutting themselves off from the world, the early works were incredibly open, humble, innocent, and vulnerable. I could see they came from a special time and place. I am very curious about her decision to revisit some of those images in what was her last exhibition at Pace Wildenstein. I made a special trip to see those paintings in real life. I’m glad I did, but they made me sad because in them I felt like I could see that Agnes no longer possessed the physical mechanics. The paint quality didn’t carry the images like it had before. Her paintings, like all reductive or distilled work, have such possibility for total failure. In this (our) kind of work, it’s a real accomplishment when feel you have made a success. Agnes’ work for so long had all the parts in play so beautifully and I am thankful to be able to experience that.
Meeting Agnes Martin, by Sharon Brant In 1973 Agnes Martin was in New York City. I think she was here in preparation for a retrospective of her work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This may have been the first retrospective for her, because she was not famous in a widespread way as she is now. Mostly, painters knew and loved her work. Somehow I heard, maybe through the art world grapevine, she was going to give a talk at Cooper Union. I was excited and could not believe my good fortune. She was a painter I admired very much and I was going to be in her presence. This was an unusual event because she had left NYC a long time ago and was living in New Mexico in a reclusive way. The group that had gathered was not huge. It wasn’t held in Cooper Union’s big auditorium. It was in a classroom. She spoke slowly and carefully, as if she had prepared succinctly the entire talk. At one point she was silent for a really long time, as if she was trying to remember what she wanted to say next. Now, regardless of its reason, the combination of this silence and succinctness is so appropriate, because it’s what we experience in her paintings. I don’t remember the specifics of her talk, but I remember the stance about painting she embodied as she stood before us. The way I would put it is that she made paying attention to her thoughts and attitudes the main purpose of her life and that painting then developed out of that awareness. Yes, the painting comes out of how we live our lives.
Agnes Martin, by Chris Ashley I learned about Agnes Martin as an undergrad in the San Francisco Bay Area, around 1976. I had an early, natural attraction to abstract art, even as young as 11 or 12; on a trip to the Oakland Museum with my grandmother around 1968 I was as interested in Bierstadt [1], as, say, Hassel Smith [2]. I thought that a painting is a painting: they all deserve to be looked at, and that they weren’t that easy to make. Adults said that a child could make that, but I didn’t agree; I couldn’t make one, and I thought there was something going on there besides the skilled (or unskilled) representation of a person, tree, cow, or table top. I don’t know why I knew that so young. At age 18 or 19 I suddenly had access to a college library with freely available back issues of art magazines, which I studied pretty closely in the stacks. I particularly liked Art International and Artforum. This, combined with access to SFMOMA, the de Young and Legion of Honor, the Oakland Museum, and the Berkeley Art Museum, were the real foundation of my education, rather than the studio classes I took, where I pretty much ended up doing whatever I wanted to do anyway. I became really intrigued by what was usually called minimalist painting: Ryman, Marden, Novros, Berthot, Humphrey, etc., in NY; Charlton, Greene in the UK; the Swiss — Lohse, Bill; BMPT in France: Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, and Toroni; as well as lots of others. I was really interested in a number of question: what is a painting; how could so little could provoke so much looking; what is the basis for the artist of this kind of work; is this a reduction or expansion of painting, i.e., is minimalist painting additive (starting from zero) or subtractive (a removing from painting of other subjects, techniques, concerns); how are decisions made by the artist; what are the differences between similar kinds of work, and how does an individual resist the urge to fix things up, design, and decorate. The problem was that in the SF Bay Area I found little exposure to this work (that would change around 1979-80 when two SF galleries — Modernism and Shirley Cerf — were actively showing Saxon, Hayward, Tchakalian, Marioni, Hafif, Gimblett, Sims, Lawson, to name a few). I was trying to figure it out through reproductions, all the while still looking closely at Bay Area figurative artists like Diebenkorn, Park, Bischoff, Brown, and Neri. I recall on a late afternoon in 1976 buying a copy of Art News (vol. 75, no. 7, September 1976) [3] at the Oakland Museum. A Rembrandt self portrait is on the cover, and inside is a multi-page article about Agnes Martin. I remember that I bought the magazine because of this article; I had seen her name before. I remember walking down the street carrying the magzine, eager to read it later. I clearly recall that the sun was out, light was bouncing off the sidewalk, and it was warm and a little windy. I still have this issue. The article covered Martin’s history, talked about her leaving New York, the film she made called “Gabriel,” and discussed her new work. I believe the occasion of the article had to do with her first show of new work since she began painting again in 1974. What made an impression on me was the way she wrote and spoke. I had just read Alan Watts’ “The Book,” and I think I’d also begun Suzuki’s “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” Martin’s thoughts and ideas were in this realm, but she spoke as a painter. I was immediately struck by her statement, “Anyone can look at a waterfall all day.” Having read that, I had just then learned a new way to approach a painting and to understand and talk about looking. I first saw an actual painting by Agnes Martin in 1977; I vividly remember the moment. I walked into a gallery at SFMOMA, at the old building in the Veteran’s War Memorial Building near the City Hall; it was one of the inner galleries just around the corner from the elevators. There it hung, and I instantly knew who the artist was. I felt happy, as if I’d discovered something. “Falling Blue,” 1963 [4], is six feet square, oil and pencil on canvas which actually looks like coarse, dark linen. Horizontal pencil lines perhaps half an inch apart are ruled to the edges of a framing border of bare canvas two inches or so on all four sides. In between the penciled horizontal lines dark violet-blue is painted in repeated strokes with a small brush from one side to the other; the blue line is brushed horizontally as far as the paint the brush can carry lasts, and then the brush is loaded with more paint to continue the line across. Each horizontal band of blue paint spanning the painting, then, isn’t completely continuous: you can see places in each band where the stroke starts, stops, and continues. Up close you can see the movement, the labor, the patience in these repeated thin stripes. But I didn’t see the details at first. I remember stopping at least ten feet away and seeing the whole painting. The thin stripes of paint turning thick and thin with starts and stops looked something like thin, soft, slowly undulating corduroy, and the painting shimmered. It both gave off and took in light. Multiple kinds of space could be seen: there was a deep space, difficult to pin down, fuzzy, wavy and distant; there was an intimate space, enveloping and up close, and the painting felt in its material like a real thing, handmade in small amounts like weaving; and there was the formal space of the boundaries between the painting and the wall, and in the border that separated the edge of the canvas and the inner painted area, slices of architectural space against painted space. The dark brown canvas and the dark blue paint were basically the two colors in the painting, but they simultaneously projected a brillaint image and also collapsed into a kind of mud that couldn’t be captured and separated by the eye. The painting wavered in and out of sight, not always easy to see, but the process of looking at it was an experience that was constant and steady. Finally, I began to see how so little could do and mean so much. I learned a lot from Falling Blue, and I looked at it at every opportunity. I learned how to look at a painting as a critical observer, and as one who experiences the painting emotionally and intellectually. It’s much harder to say, however, what I learned about making a painting, because the entire painting is there before me — canvas, pencil lines, strokes of blue paint — and the entire act of its making can apparently be deciphered. Why can’t this be easily repeated? I can look at he painting almost as a recipe, but I can’t make it. I learned something to do with intention (having an idea, following through on it, and staring down the results to decide whether or not to keep it) and contrivance (having a bad idea, illustrating an idea, losing sight of or failing to follow the idea, or just plain bad editing of work). “Falling Blue,” and successive paintings by Agnes Martin I’ve seen, taught me about using materials directly, finding and committing to a vision and voice, avoiding illustration, and the power of distillation. I think these are some of the strengths of her work. Happily, she was able to work for a long time, and I believe her example and body of work is very important to any kind of artist. [1] http://www.museumca.org/images/1151.jpg
MARTIN, Agnes Born in Saskatchewan, she emigrated to the United States in 1932 to attend college in Washington State and New York. In the early 1960s, a few years after relocating from New York to New Mexico, Martin began producing paintings of grids composed of horizontal bricks, so to speak, that run from edge to edge, both vertically and horizontally. Perhaps sensing that she had reached an ultimate image, much as her near-contemporary Ad Rheinhardt had, she stopped painting for several years before returning to grids that were even more subtle in making thin, straight parallel lines that shimmer, and thus evoke a spiritual experience outside of themselves. Not unlike Reinhardt again, Martin is also an assertive writer: “Art work is a representation of our devotion to life. Everyone is devoted to life with an intensity far beyond our comprehension. The slightest hint of devotion to life in art work is received by all with gratitude.” Especially in group exhibitions, in my experience, her work shines through the strength of subtlety. — Richard Kostelanetz, excerpted with permission from his book A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes, New York: Schirmer Books, second edition, 2000 Interview with Kevin Finklea, by Matthew Delegetposted October 1st, 2004
The following interview was published on MINUS SPACE in October 2004 in conjunction with Kevin Finklea’s spotlight exhibition.
Matthew Deleget: Let’s begin by talking about color, the central concern of your paintings over the past decade. You’ve worked in a pharmacy for over 20 years now, which you acknowledge has greatly affected your color sensibility. In fact, every time I see a television commercial for the acid reflux medicine, Prevacid, I think of your work. The pill design and resulting commercial are focused around two high-key colors, an intense aqua blue and a brilliant hot pink. Tell me about pharmaceuticals and color, and their influence on your work.
Kevin Finklea: The colors of drugs crept into my work so very long ago, that I scarcely remember the first piece I made involving those colors. I once felt the need to completely separate my studio activity from my pharmacy practice. I honestly wasn’t comfortable admitting my identity as an artist in either a corporate or professional setting. I came to realize that being an artist explained my almost total lack of what was considered normal. I take off time to work in my studio or install shows. This is not exactly the same old road being traveled by most. Once that closet was opened I was off and running I do remember thinking that the capsules and pills I saw constituted a new source for my color. I had for many years depended upon what I will term vernacular color. Here, any colors I found in my sub-ghetto neighborhood provided me with a color source for my painted sculpture. The most common example I can give is painted out graffiti. In this circumstance any available color of paint is used to obliterate the graffiti mark. Horrid color choices often result from this activity. As every square centimeter of the neighborhood became gentrified; there was scarcely enough to work from necessitating a new color reference anyway. Early on, in my training, it occurred to me that the colors chosen by the drug companies were pretty damned powerful. I generally count tablets and capsules on a deep cobalt turquoise counting tray (PB36 comes close to it). I have used this type of tray for over 20 years. Just about anything you pour onto such a surface is interesting. I surmise that it was specially designed by Abbott Laboratories to have just such an effect. Everything in drug world is researched and designed for your viewing pleasure. And also designed to optimize your memory of the product; thereby increasing your desire for the product in turn. You wouldn’t want to forget the name of the product at the doctor’s office when you ask for it would you? Who in this country doesn’t currently know about the little purple pill (Prilosec) or the color of Viagra? The color of a medication is often marketed as a substance in and of itself. I don’t get to see those drug world ads that I hear about from patients as I have no television. I assure you I have more than my share of getting to see today’s hot new advertised meds. In fact, I get PR long before the drugs enter the market. Additionally, Philadelphia has a significant clinical trial setting for pharmaceuticals. Drugs are actually being used here before they are finally approved. Patients often start asking for drugs before they actually become available. It becomes a challenge to keep up on the latest releases.
MD: Your paintings function similar to the drugs themselves. Through their sheer intensity, they create shifts in perception, shifts in reality. They possess an almost hypnotic, or as you’ve termed it “psychotropic”, effect. Please discuss their intended impact on the viewer.
KF: My, I never thought I could effect such a thing. How lovely to be drug-like. It feels rather sexy and dangerous to be a drug. If only more people would want to stick me in their mouths. This does rather point to the obvious desire loop created by drugs both legal and illegal. I don’t see the need to get into an analysis of that in this discussion. There has been more than enough literature and texts created around this observation. I would offer David Healy’s The Anti-Depressant Era as a salient example of such writing. I think the key thought here is that both pharmaceuticals and street drugs are leveled onto the same plane of desire. As for intended impact I would hope the paintings are a tad bit unhinging. I find that people describe what I make as garish. I question this assessment and hope that the work does as well for the viewer. In presenting such high keyed chromatics along with the white work, I ultimately intend the work to be calming and quiet. Westerners just seem to respond unfavorably to pure unsullied color at this time. I should comment that we are in an incredibly overwhelming age where the word intense has lost any true meaning. By making something that reflects this intensity, I would hope the viewer would reflect upon this in turn. Obviously I have the usual myriad of references any artist will carry at this point in history. I don’t honestly believe any viewer will pick-up on all of my personal references. How could they? If only some part comes across and or fragments thereof; then the work has succeeded for me. For the record, I didn’t come up with the term psychotropic. It is certainly used in pharmacy and medicine, albeit not with any great frequency. It is the type of word found more readily in journals and psychiatric texts. Not my favorite type of reading mind you. Can we go back to people wanting to stick me in their mouths now?
MD: I find it interesting that your work subverts the traditional associations of color throughout art history. The color blue, for example, traditionally carries romantic associations with sky and sea, sadness and isolation. You, on the other hand, prefer the connotations of Komar & Melamid’s art research project, The Most Wanted Paintings, as a starting point for your work, in which they learned blue was America’s favorite color through a nationwide survey. Discuss how your work advances new associations of color.
KF: Well it isn’t possible to be transgressive any longer is it really? You might as well continue to mess with the past then. And because everyone knows and accepts that past; you are in effect messing with something already familiar. It would appear that blue is the favored color of many nations. I thoroughly endorse the idea of seeing the Komar & Melamid site at Dia. Komar & Melamid weren’t the starting point for my work in blue. They simply codified what I already suspected about people’s preferences. I have to say that I find blue incredibly difficult to paint. I comment upon this in my statement for the show. I naturally go towards reds, oranges and yellows. I find I do pretty well with green as well. I recall a fabulously famous dealer in Chelsea once informing me that “yellow and green does not sell very well.” Hell, that just made me want to paint in those colors even more. This also points up to the reason for titling the show as I did. I Wish I Could Be Your Color seemed a reasonable enough desire to state. It wasn’t any attempt to “sell very well” as it were. It is also quite contrary to my natural predilections. You could say the show has been a great challenge to paint.
MD: In your statements, you’ve described contemporary culture as “brutal” and “unromantic”. You also called it “overly designed hyper-aestheticized”. How has this impacted the aesthetics of your work?
KF: Every breathing moment of our lives are mediated and manipulated by someone wanting us to have something we don’t really need. The American landscape is exploding with advertising and media. There isn’t anything nice about this. I find that landscape littered with what I term visual pollution. This meets my criteria for brutality. And I don’t think anyone would find anything romantic in a place where someone is constantly trying to seduce me to get my money. Certainly this brutal commerce has been written about ad nauseam. As a result I try to rid my life of the constant hammering of brutal commerce. I do my best to try to remove the hyper-aestheticized from my life as well. I did not coin the phrase hyper-aestheticized. There are numerous texts discussing the subject. The last two that I recall reading are texts by Marc Augé and Neil Leach. As for how this has impacted my work? First of all I believe you are referring to a statement I wrote for the solo show at Pentimenti. I see the blue paintings themselves as a brutal unromantic response. As I’ve said I do see our contemporary setting as such. As for the overly designed hyper-aestheticized bit I do see myself going against the grain with the blue paintings. Changing the expected context for the color blue could be seen rather cynically as just more design work I suppose. I intend it to short circuit the expectations of the anaesthetized (read drugged) designed world.
MD: This year you began a new series of white paintings called Empty Pages. How do today’s circumstances differ from the time and place of Kazimir Malevich’s white paintings? Or Robert Rauschenberg’s white paintings from the early 1950s? Or Robert Ryman’s first white enamel on steel paintings from the mid-1960s? How are the context and meaning different today?
KF: I can say that history had very little to do with my decision to make white paintings. I have been making drawings on paper with graphite and white acrylic for over 15 years. I did so to expedite my ideas for the wall pieces. I have been making actual drawings on the walls of my studio for even longer. During my first trip to Munich I began a shelf piece with Laza marble. Laza marble is exceptionally white. I came back to my studios in Philadelphia and completed the piece by placing the marble on a shelf. The shelf I made was whitened to come close to but not match the marble. On a subsequent trip to Munich I made yet another marble piece. This was shelved as well and paired with a painted wooden wall piece. For me this is an ongoing series. I only make the work when the circumstances present themselves. Just this morning I found yet another piece of wood, upon which, I will base the production of some marble in the future. I suppose a travel grant to Munich would be in order. My point in digressing into this is that I am perpetually involved in some type of white on white work at any given time in the studio. It is simply part of my working process. The white on white paintings were begun as a way of bringing the drawings on the wall out of the studio. These new paintings presented the challenge of making a new kind of painting (for me) on a new substrate. They are painted on acrylic panels that hover off the wall but allow you to see through them to the wall. This was a solution that contained both an established studio process with new materials in a completely novel format. The title came from a song on the first album I ever bought on my own as a kid (Traffic’s John Barleycorn Must Die.) I’d have to say I can’t see cutting out parts of the wall to present in an exhibition. And as for drawing on the walls, we may see this come out of the studio into a gallery setting with this show as well. I intend to deflower one of Pentimenti’s office walls during the installation of this show. I believe this offers a personal context for the white paintings. Parenthetically, as for placing them in some historical context, that is really someone else’s task. When I began making actual paintings I knew I had to do so without historical placement or positioning. I make paintings now and for myself I might add, in relation to the time I live. There comes a point where you realize you have to loose all that art history you carry. I can tell you I nearly graduated with a double degree in art history and studio practice. I certainly had the course work. But all that really weighs you down. I liken it to coming to realize you really can fly to Europe with a carry-on bag. The excess weight just slows you down doesn’t it? As for history I am more interested in contemporary painters. David Row, Frank Badur, Imi Knoebel, and Blinky Palermo come to mind immediately as the people I am interested in seeing. I managed to see the Palermo retrospective at the Serpentine in London twice last year. That gave me more information and contextual framework than any museum visit I’ve had in years. Yes, I know Palermo is deceased, but I still consider him a contemporary painter.
MD: Your Empty Pages paintings, on the other hand, approach the idea of visual overload from a completely opposing standpoint to your color-saturated Miniature paintings. In these paintings, your visual strategy is absence and emptiness. Your intention is to “empty the works of all color and image” and to represent a “cancellation of the viewer’s attention.” To what end?
KF: I just thought it would be good to have something quiet around after all the cacophony provided by the high keyed chromatic work. I do spend a great deal of time thinking in quiet isolation. By and large Philadelphia is a very good city for such activity and very possibly why I continue to live here. (This may be a vestige of its Quaker past.) I would like to think that this work will provide the viewer with such an experience. This is beyond the impetus behind the work’s process that I’ve described and quite a lovely collateral result. The first three works in this group will be hung by themselves in the project room at Pentimenti Gallery for the run of this show. Here I feel I should acknowledge my thanks to two of my dealers. First and foremost I thank Christine Pfister for encouraging me to make the white paintings for the project room at Pentimenti. Secondly, I should give a nod to Emma Hill in London for first encouraging me to consider working on her gallery walls as I do in my studio. While this is something that will be first realized in Philadelphia; this is a project we’ve discussed for the future in her space at the Eagle. This points up to the ideal situation for an artist/dealer relationship. It’s very cool when a dealer allows you to run with an idea. Honestly I don’t really believe that I can empty the color out of anything I paint. It is only an approximation of such a state that I approach in the Empty Pages work. Parenthetically, I would like to say that just about everything I paint is an approximation. A constant response to my work is its perfection. I assure you that nothing I paint is perfect. I can’t imagine a perfect painting being made by anything less than a machine. I believe that work that doesn’t absolutely manifest any particular identified attribute completely is far more interesting for its failures. In my case I know the work is not perfect. The small imperfections and variegations made by my hand make a surface far more interesting than anything I’ve even seen made by machine. I intend this to provide the viewer with a little bit more to look at than what the average dot matrix screen is capable of showing. As for cancelling my the viewer’s attention, well that isn’t completely possible either is it? I would like to think of this as the politic of what I am trying to pull off in the white paintings. Actually I find that what I’ve achieved is a thing of great subtlety. The buried paint trapped between layers of titanium white still has a presence in the panels. There is a sense of the glow of the absent color seemingly bleeding out to the edges of the acrylic panel. I should perhaps re-term this a loss of the viewer’s attention. No one appears to respond to subtlety these days. For the record there were no Miniatures paintings per se. Miniatures was a show I participated in at the Eagle Gallery in London. The paintings in that show were all from the Drift series which centered around psychotropic med colors. They were fantastic little paintings. I made the substrate somewhat traditionally with linen mounted on wooden panels. This seemed the perfect material for a miniature.
MD: I would like to spend some time talking about your process in the studio. How do you begin creating a new painting? How do you realize your ideas? Please explain.
KF: You have glimpse of what goes on in my studio from my comments on the Empty Pages above. New work almost always begins with what I believe I want to do with the color. I say believe as I invariably change what I begin with in a painting’s plan, sometimes painting out, repainting or counter painting an area repeatedly. Last night I worked on a very subtle warming of a light blue surface by overpainting a rather characterless synthetic manganese with the same paint infused with a nasty yellow dye color. The nasty dye color gave the blue just the right edge. I did not begin with this plan for the color really at all. The other concern that takes as great a place as color is what the color will be painted upon. I prefer fast surfaces for painting. I look for a near total lack of resistance in the substrate. In this show I have painted on bass wood, stretched canvas, MDF and acrylic panels. I am always looking for something that will give the painting some peculiar object quality. That is to say, something I can do with the substrate that will make the painting unusual. I am showing work that varies from 6.5cm to less than 1 cm in thickness. Some of the panels have been rounded to the point that they seem almost aerodynamic. Every painting’s composition gets drawn directly on the wall before I make the panel. I find this allows me to work out issues with scale and proportion. It also gives me a place to nail down the final composition as well. All my notes on prescription blanks and scraps of paper are very nice and get lots of attention on studio visits. They’re lousy when it comes to actually plotting out the painting.
MD: In your paintings, you never use more than two colors, which are precisely paired and coordinated. How do you decide on specific color pairings?
KF: Deciding upon the final colors I make is never certain and would be best viewed as an idiosyncratic process. As for them being precisely paired, I don’t see it that way. I strive for a brittle balance between the colors, composition and the thing they are painted upon. I can only say I know when a painting is right. The word precise implies something measurable or objective. I don’t utilize anything of the sort when I work. I think of a painting’s color as a tunable attribute. When the color doesn’t feel right; I often think of the process as a tuning of the chromatics involved. Some paintings I get in tune instantly while others become a nightmare of overpainting and sanding. I’ve just spent most of August in this process (getting ready for this show.) Here I realize that some reader may object to this in so much as I’ve said I use the drug colors as a source. The colors of the drugs and their juxtaposition on my PB36 counting tray are really only a starting point. I often make color notes on prescription blanks. Rather like a doctor prescribing a remedy for the work. I use those notes and observations as a place to begin mixing color. I can’t tell you how many times I get it wrong. My studio is full of shelves of mixed paint just waiting for the right painting to come along.
MD: Your paintings function in three dimensions. The “image” almost always wraps around the face of the painting onto its sides. How did you arrive at this solution? What does it do to the painting’s presence?
KF: I began making painted objects as a student. In fact, this was under the tutelage of another Minus Space participant Richard Bottwin. I was his shop slave at art school. I was in art school in the period of the end of high minimalism. This was when the art world had shifted its focus to some other hype of the moment and minimalism had begun to establish its auction records. As I student I was aware of this and so I certainly didn’t want to do what the minimalists had done. In fact seeing this horrible process made me question what had been accomplished by minimalism in the first place. I recall that I didn’t really respond to minimalism in any personal way. I found it cool and detached. And it was quickly becoming apparent that it was fully institutionalized as an official art style. What I was interested in was suprematism and the Russian avant-garde. At the time it was almost impossible to do find any real texts or information on this period; which I can certainly attribute to cold war politics. There was the allure of something slightly off limits to me as a young art student. I consumed as much of the suprematist and constructivist materials that I could obtain at the time. And I can say that I responded to this work much more than anything being produced by the minimalists. Here I found that one could positively blur their discipline into any area of production desired. The Russians (along with the neo-plasticists) made it clear that an artist could produce anything from a drawing on up to a full installation. This thinking became my model. I concentrated on drawing and object making as a student. I never really left my concerns with object making behind. It was in Germany that I found I wanted to shift to what I would term a concern with pure painting. I was crossing the Rhine in Cologne and saw a channel marker in the river that was absolutely riveting visually. It was flat and floating. This somehow presented me with the idea that I had to do the same thing with my work. A bit of history is necessary in this case. I had been making objects in response to the idea of signalling devices. I was making a series of reliefs at the time called Signal and Meter. Both had to do with objects situated both in the landscape and in response to their landscape setting. Here the channel marker presented the same sort of concern but in a markedly more abstract manner than the actual objects I had been making. This, combined with my need to make pure unfettered color, provided me with the impetus to begin making paintings. The first things I made were painted MDF panels. I felt that I had to bring what I was doing in the objects to the painting. Subsequently I painted the edges of the MDF as I had the wooden reliefs. I also made the MDF panels float on the wall, as opposed to touching or resting on the wall, as the wooden reliefs had done as well.
MD: The scale of your paintings is almost always modest, never larger than a few feet in either direction. Your works also possess an amazingly delicate, hand-painted surface. Talk about the importance of human scale and touch in your work.
KF: I honestly believe that for non-objective painting to succeed it has to relate to human scale. I believe this is a central route in connecting with the viewer. As I said, I made painted objects before I shifted my current focus to pure paintings. The forms produced were completely based upon measurements of my own body. These were painted wooden reliefs that hung on the wall. I found time and time again that during the run of a show, the paint would often be rubbed off of the edges of the objects. Here I can only surmise that viewers felt compelled to touch the objects to complete the experience of seeing the object. So much for the don’t touch bit, eh? Rather than being annoying I found this a positive response to what I had done. Additionally I would have to say that I couldn’t paint anything without a sense of my hand being in the completed work. Again this offers the possibility of a viewer connecting with the painting. And I would hope that the hand painted quality of the surface would lend vulnerability (yes, a much over used expression, but still appropriate) to what would seem otherwise impenetrable.
MD: And finally, how do you see abstract painting developing today? In which direction do you see heading? Where do you perceive there to be room for future exploration?
KF: Many people pretend to see the future. I don’t indulge myself in future fantasies where painting is concerned. I honestly believe that non-objective painting will continue to respond to present circumstances and change accordingly. I really truly prefer to be painting in the present. I can’t say I worry about either the future or anticipating what the next big thing will be in painting. I would have to also comment that any new developments in non-objective painting will occur in relative obscurity. Here I am recalling a comment made by Bridget Riley in an article she wrote for The Illustrated London News in 1983: “I think it very probable that in the future there may be a divergence of paths [in the visual arts]: one tendency will come more and more to resemble the world of pop music, with group following group or movement following movement, supported by a vast promotional structure. Simultaneously, genuine development will tend to go underground (my italics). Thus the Western World will produce an inversion of the effect of totalitarianism, with commercialism replacing party ideology as the dominant factor…” There is more to this quote and it can be found in The Eye’s Mind. I am quite certain that non-objectivity will continue to develop. Its emergence in the 20th century is a relatively recent cultural event. How could anyone begin to pretend that it is either complete or over as it were. There exists a seemingly endless parade of nay sayers where painting is concerned. I find that this is often the symptom of hidden agendas and professional concerns. Curators and critics always get heaps of attention when they decree the death of painting every decade don’t they? Nihilists have always appeared to me as self-centered and frankly rather boring. Interview with Richard Bottwin, by Rossana Martinezposted March 1st, 2004
The following interview was published on MINUS SPACE in March 2004 in conjunction with Richard Bottwin’s spotlight exhibition.
Rossana Martinez: I would like to start our interview at the beginning of your career. You came of age as an artist during the early 1970s in and around New York City. What kind of work were you making at that time? Were there any specific artists, exhibitions, or events that had a profound impact on your early process and thinking?
Richard Bottwin: My work has always been about geometry and architecture. In 1968, during my senior year in high school, I happened upon Donald Judd’s first retrospective at the Whitney Museum. It spoke to me immediately and I still have vivid memories of it. Tony Smith’s work also caught my eye, although I was partial to the more horizontal, landscape oriented pieces. In 1971, I saw a large installation by Smith, entitled “Eighty-One More” at the Museum of Modern Art. It filled a gallery on the ground floor off of 53rd Street where the bookstore most recently resided. A very large platform in the shape of a triangle, incised with a diagonal grid, it had four-foot high tetrahedrons scattered on the grid. I was mesmerized. It was a plywood mockup and it was destroyed after the exhibition. That work informed a lot of what I did back then. My undergraduate instructors at Lehman College (formerly Hunter College’s Bronx campus) were almost all involved with geometric abstraction, although it was mostly of the European — Max Bill and Neo-Plastic — variety. They seemed to be more concerned with making “sublime objects” rather than room filling, monumental, industrial constructions. As they were all showing in New York galleries, I had access to their output and it certainly affected me. More importantly, though, I have been a rabid fan of architecture since I was a small child. I was building little flat roofed modern houses out of scraps of wood when I was six and, by the time I was eleven, I was well acquainted with the work of Wright, Mies, and Le Corbusier by way of library books. My family knew to call a modern building to my attention when we were speeding by one in our car. In the late 50s, my parents, low on cash, would take us on cheap Sunday afternoon outings to Idlewild Airport (later renamed Kennedy). There was a garden of fantastic pavilions being built there to serve the new jet traffic. I was in heaven every time we made that loop around the terminals. It was a very strong need to devour and reprocess architectural issues that fired me up. I was fortunate that when I came into adulthood in the early 70s, the predominant vocabulary of the art world was in sync with my predilection.
RM: For two decades, you’ve focused your attention on sculpture. Most recently though, you’ve been producing wall-mounted sculptural reliefs, which I find particularly unique about your body of work. The format is clearly challenging and wrought with contradictions. How did you decide to start making reliefs? What are the specific set of challenges that come with making them (versus free-standing sculpture)?
RB: I blame it all on gravity. I’ve made pedestal sculpture in the past, but I have come to despise the notion of that white column supporting a small work. The conventions that sculptors commonly use to keep their work from falling over, i.e., vertical poles (sculpture-on-a-stick), slabs and platforms (sculpture-on-a-pancake), disinterest me. By placing a small piece on the wall, gravity simply isn’t an issue. The mysteries created by the visual contradictions I construct remain intact. With the larger, freestanding works, it often is my goal to make it look as is they could not possibly be standing on their own. Engineering this without hidden concrete anchors (cheating) can be a challenge. I try to devise structural systems that appear to be straightforward, but actually support in surprising ways. The reward is to seem to defy gravity when I have, in fact, just used it cleverly.
RM: In addition to your reliefs, you have also realized many large(r)-scale public art projects over the past few years. I am thinking about your installation at Bird Park in Philadelphia (next to Gallery Joe), and more recently, your bench-like sculptures at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. All were architectural or structural in nature and made from raw wooden timbers bolted together. When did you start thinking about your work outside of the gallery space? Can you talk about the interactive/participatory nature of your public pieces? What public projects are you currently developing?
RB: As stated before, my work is primarily about architecture and this informs my vocabulary. I have always planned large-scaled outdoor pieces and built my first one on the campus of Pennsylvania State University at Clarion in 1983. There was another pavilion-like piece in Fairmont Park in Philadelphia in 1987. When my work becomes architectural in scale (in other words, when it gets as large or larger than a person), I like it to function architecturally. I have no desire to confront someone with a big abstract thing. I’d much rather that the viewer approaches my work thinking that it is a nice place to sit and get some shelter. Then, after it’s too late, they realize that the seat is much too high and deep, and they must pull their feet up and themselves into the thing, then I’ve got them! They will then see the world around them through my vertiginous geometry, and hopefully, try to make some sense of it all. The next public project? I alternate the larger, quasi-functional works with the smaller indoor pieces that serve as research and development. When an opportunity for an outdoor piece comes along, I’ll be on the job.
RM: Your work possesses an aggressively conceptual quality that you describe in your statement as “paradoxical” and “disorienting.” A number of your relief works, for instance, such as “Square & Angle #10″ and “Square & Angle #14″, appear to be sitting on a sort of white “shelf”, which is in fact part of the work. Describe how you create visual paradox in your work.
RB: It all comes from a physical problem. When I was three, I was treated for an unusually “lazy eye”. One eye being dominant, I never really developed full-fledged stereoscopic vision. Oh, my eyes might converge an image subliminally now and then for my brain to use, but mostly I get by with “relative depth perception” (collecting visual clues and making some sense of them). It works well enough except in low light situations where I might occasionally get mild vertigo and stumble a little (if you see me weaving around in a dark bar, it’s my eyes, not the drink). Anyway, I have always amused myself by looking at things and alternating my perception of them by “flattening them out” and then seeing them in “3-D” again. To recreate this sensation in my sculpture, I distort the perspective in the forms in my work. This distortion interacts with the actual convergence that is occurring for the viewer and that interaction can create those paradoxes. I don’t see the shelves in the “Square & Angle” pieces as particularly paradoxical though. I simply wanted to have a square emerging from the wall at an angle. A fellow artist and good friend of mine, Kevin Finklea, had used small white shelves in his work, so I suppose that this possibility was floating around somewhere in the back of my mind. I thought that I could support the square and create a comment about its angle to the wall by restating a variant of that information in the shelf. The shelf is also one of those architectural details I like to play with.
RM: Craftsmanship is not a word that is commonly talked about anymore. You take great care in how your works are constructed and finished. This is especially evident after visiting your studio. Your precision and deliberateness are some of your work’s most memorable qualities, at least in my mind. Please talk a bit about your craft.
RB: Being a neat and careful craftsman does not come naturally or easily to me. I also studied art in a liberal arts institution, not a professional art school, during the iconoclastic late sixties and early seventies. There was no emphasis on learning process and materials. You could learn to weld if you liked (I didn’t), but traditional modeling, casting, mold making and carving techniques never sullied my education. Learning how to fabricate my sculpture has been a constant challenge to me, and I am still figuring out how to do it as well as I’d like it to be done. I was impressed early on that my ideas would not be credible if they were not realized in an appropriate way. I just do what is necessary to communicate the idea. The trick, of course, is to make the materials (especially when there are several in a single piece) look inevitable. At times I have veered too close to the decorative and have had to slap myself back to reality. I do find the process of making things by hand very important to the development of my sculpture. The physical act of manipulating materials and building things seems to stimulate the production of new ideas.
RM: I have a specific interest in your use of materials. In particular, how did you begin applying paint to your sculptures?
RB: I’ve always thought of the paint as a tactile material on the surface that just happens to be a specific color. At first, I used flat grey Rustoleum enamel because it was thick and smooth, and with the inevitable warm and cool shadows that would be cast in the pieces, it was every color and no color at the same time. When I started to use real color, it was in a very intuitive, painterly way. I used oils and an alkyd medium because of the alkyd’s even waxy gloss. I also liked the ease with which it could be used to apply glazes that modulate everything and bring the sculpted forms and paint into focus. In the late 80s and early 90s, I was making very complex, almost “Rococo” wall sculptures that were painted and gold leafed. Going “overboard” in this way allowed me to collect enough information to really know what I was doing when I became reductive again. Later, I used oil paint and alkyd medium because of its versatility. The oil colors allowed me to vary the opacity and transparency in areas of solid color. That sort of manipulation is one way to make a single color interesting. Now, I use acrylics because they are easier to handle and less toxic. Golden Paints has developed mediums and paint consistencies that are nearly equivalent to oils for my purposes.
RM: Although your works generally appear very straightforward, even factual, at first glance, upon closer inspection, they are in fact highly intricate structures consisting of shifting angles (rarely 45 or 90 degrees cuts); layers of sandwiched, exposed plywood and (sometimes) exotic veneers; polished, high value colors (always slightly off the primaries and secondaries); etc. They are activated to the point of being kinetic. What kind of effect are you seeking when you combine these various elements? How do you know when you’ve got it right? What kind of experience are you creating for the viewer?
RB: You’ve just asked and answered your own question. It is my goal to present something that looks easily understandable at first glance with perhaps just a few mysteries. When you walk around the pieces to figure them out, they change radically and present more questions. As mentioned earlier, I love to play with perspective and, if I get it right, the works might seem to twist and move as you look at them. The experience? Well, hopefully not nausea. Best results: surprise and a moment of reflection about what we perceive. Oh yes, and humor. Laughter is essential to my existence and I feel compelled to share that. Distorting geometry and pushing primary colors in weird ways also reflects my desire to subvert some of the dogmas that have grown up with geometric abstraction. The vocabulary I use has been around for almost a century. I am madly in love with the work of Tatlin, Lissitsky, Malevich, Rodchenko and the de Stijl artists, but I really don’t need to reinvent what they have already accomplished. A few of my purist college mentors from the 60s and 70s might be appalled with my heresies. Using what is left to us, but also rebelling and messing around with it, well, that’s what the next generation does. Oh yes, for some reason I cannot explain, I am just very partial to 60° angles.
RM: You’ve had your studio in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood for over 10 years now. I am interested to hear your thoughts about the expanding Brooklyn art scene. How has it has evolved during your time in DUMBO? And what has been the place of reductive work in it?
RB: DUMBO has been a convenient, scenic, and once upon a time, cheap place to have a studio. The DUMBO Arts Center and its director, Joy Glidden, have been a terrific resource and stepping stone for many artists, including myself, so I’m glad that I’ve been there and that its been there for us. I really don’t see any specific relationship between the neighborhood and the content of my work. The great value has been the proximity of the many artists in the area and the productive professional connections that can occur with this kind of density. I imagine that a number of the artists on the MINUS SPACE web site have had this connection.
RM: You’ve also lived and worked in Philadelphia for a long stretch of time. Historically, both Philadelphia and New York have been hotbeds for artists making reductive art. How has the reception to your work been in Philadelphia? And how has it differed from New York?
RB: I’ve had some success in Philadelphia, and perhaps, greater opportunities exhibiting with commercial galleries there than in New York. I don’t know how I can quantify it with regard to reductive art. Perhaps with having lived and worked there for a while, some opportunities became available. Philadelphia, being smaller than New York, allowed some connections to be made a little more easily. My current gallery affiliation in Philadelphia (Pentimenti Gallery) came about from the dealer, Christine Pfister, seeing my slides at the DUMBO Arts Center in Brooklyn. With regard to the notion of minimalism having a home in Philadelphia, it occurred to me that perhaps related to that is the fact that Philadelphia is really a city of architects. With Louis Kahn having having worked there and a great number of major firms starting out there (even if they have moved up and on..), it really has been the home and starting point of many influential builders. A short list is: Venturi & Rauch, Mitchell Giurgola, Kohn, Pederson, Fox, Davis, Brody and more… The PSFS building, one of the first international style steel and glass towers built in this country was built there in 1929. There is a perfectly circular wall mounted water fountain in the building that is said to be designed by a youthful apprentice, Louis Kahn.
RM: Finally, I would like to ask you about your thoughts concerning the general perception, appreciation, and support for abstract, geometric art in this country. What are your thoughts on this?
RB: It seems that art viewers in this country need a story that’s readily accessible or a moral that’s easy to digest. A non-objective, reductive, abstract narrative that’s not purely decorative still seems to be a hard sell, even though the genre has been around for over half a century. Of course, there are a handful of artists who have achieved fame, if not fortune doing this. I thoroughly enjoy their work, but sometimes the overbearing scale and arrogance of a lot of this sculpture leaves me uneasy. In a country that values things by how many millions of dollars they cost or how far they’d reach if laid end to end, it seems that making reductive art really, really big might gain it a wider audience. |
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