ABSTRACT VISIONS: Selections by Peter Selz
Naomie Kremer's energetic abstract paintings allude to forest interiors and Donna Brookman's evocative Ragini Paintings also respond pictorially to the natural environment as do the stunning new paintings by Eva Bovenzi. Kevan Jenson creates visual magic with the use of smoke. Gary Edward Blum's acrylics which at first glace appear to be pure abstractions surprise the viewer with their trompe l'oeil details, just as Gloria Tanchelev's square canvases reveal glowing layers beneath their smooth surfaces. Bruce Hassan's organically encrusted bronzes are ingeniously named after the volcanoes on the earth's six continents.
I am pleased to assemble this extraordinary group of Bay Area artists for ABSTRACT VISIONS at Berkeley Art Center and thank director Suzanne Tan for assisting me with the selection process.
– Peter Selz
For more information, please visit: www.berkeleyartcenter.org
Thursday, June 26, 2011, 6-9pm
Saturday, June 4, 2011
216 O Street | Sacramento, CA 95814
For more information, please visit: www.crockerartmuseum.org
A ten day exhibition of works by a select group of contemporary artists currently working in California culminating in a dynamic Gala Auction on April 30, 2011.
April 20-30, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011, 6-8pm, Silent Auction opens, Free Admission
Saturday, April 30, 2011, 6:30-9:30pm
For more information, please visit: www.kala.org
FRAMING ABSTRACTION: Mark, Symbol, Signifier
Main Gallery
4800 Hollywood Blvd.
Los Angeles, Ca 90027
323.644.6269
February 27 – April 24, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2-5pm
Lita Albuquerque, Jordi Alcaraz, Gary Edward Blum, Hans Burkhardt, Meg Cranston, Mark Harrington, James Hayward, Charles Christopher Hill, Kevan Jenson, Naomi Kramer
Marlena Doktorczyk-Donohue and Peter Selz
Hosted by LAMAGA
Abstract form always existed. Prehistoric cave art, ancient art, medieval art and modern art used abstraction right alongside stunning verisimilitude in smart, deliberate ways. Western cultures equated the ability to duplicate the world with the highest standard of art skill, until the camera. Machines that in a click captured the real—as well as contact with artifacts of colonialism—led artists to re-imagine uses and meanings for abstraction: universal communication, theosophy, primal expression, the inner structure of objective reality, and to signify creative ‘free will’ in contrast to lock-step formulas of social realism. Art history attributes the first abstraction to Kandinsky’s Improvisation of 1911. Oddly enough, non figurative forms in that work repeat similar shapes in the oldest known caves in Marseilles—and these potent marks sit comfortably beside images of lions so real they rend the heart. It’s fitting that one hundred years later we reconsider what abstraction means today, its legacy and longevity, how and why it is used. More fitting still is that we do this through works and words of artists who deploy that language now, each in very different but ever viable ways.
This exhibition, Framing Abstraction, is meant to celebrate the centennial of abstract painting. Abstract art has evolved from its original spiritual and utopian stance in the early 20th century to an art which was seen as radical-avant-garde, and on to its present vibrant position. Refuting the digital display of the current moment, abstract paintings are simply pictures, brushed by the hand of the artist, in which emotional intuition is framed by the artist’s rational mind into dynamic metaphors.
For more information please visit: www.lamag.org
ART IN AMERICA REVIEW at DOLBY CHADWICK
In his show of new abstract paintings, Gary Edward Blum juggles modes of pictorial reality, creating productive tensions between flatness and depth, and intriguing interplays between fact and representation. He has a painterly feel for a color and surface as well as a gift for gamesmanship. Each of seven acrylics on canvas, ranging from 2 1/2 to 6 feet on a side, is accompanied by a small framed acrylic on paper study. Several of the paintings faithfully duplicate the studies, while some are variation on their themes. The canvases display a muted palette and rectangular blocks or bands of color, some of the works recalling the clarity of a John McLaughlin, while others are more Rothkoesque. All, though, feature an additional painting within the painting that replicates the composition on paper. These replicas seem to hang on the surface of the painting, trompe l’oeil fashion, complete with faux Scotch tape and painted shadows. In several works, such as A Rarely Loved Thing, the darker tones at the bottom seem to describe a floor, the lighter upper area a wall on which the replica of the study appears to hang. That “wall” is marked with a grid in subtle shades of off-white and light gray, recalling not only Agnes Martin but also the kind of grid artists use to scale up a study.
Blum’s play between surface and depth, and his room motif, become at times a bit arch, with the exception of Get Your Things, with its reference to depictions of the artist’s studio. It could be read as representing the floor and wall of a room in which the replica hangs. The lower part is flecked with daubs of gray, white and blue that look like stains on a floor, but in fact they are the palette with which the replica was painted.
Elsewhere, things are satisfyingly hazier. The study for Solitude is divided between fields of deep violet-black on the left and turquoise-aqua on the right. Departing from this composition, the painting introduces a faintly gridded off-white area at the left, which includes the replica of the study; the violet-black that dominates half the paper work is reduced to a central vertical strip that separates the off-white from an expanse of turquoise-aqua at right. In this work, no “floor” corresponds to the “wall” where the replica seemingly hangs, and thus there is less implication of an interior. Instead, Blum suggests a more expansive and ambiguous space, just as the painting’s divergence from the study indicates a freer, looser approach.
–Mark Van Proyen
Blum's companion pieces: Gary Edward Blum's work at Dolby Chadwick risks getting snarled in its own cleverness, but it presents viewers a healthy resistance. Healthy in the sense that, in a culture hooked on speed, it takes time to figure out and rewards inspection with a clear internal logic. "Painting for Sylvia" (2010), a characteristic work in the series, consists of a small framed abstract "Study" that Blum has repainted - illustrated, really - as the kernel of a large unframed canvas.
In the painting, the "Study" appears to hang on a wall, but then you notice that the wall repeats, magnified, the composition of the "Study" itself. In this toying with pictorial paradox, Blum may revisit territory explored by William Anastasi and Michael Snow - even by René Magritte (1898-1967) - decades ago, but a pervasive new postmodernist suspicion of representation has refreshed the exercise.
The Crocker Art Museum has acquired its second piece, The Long Year, for its permanent collection. | July 2010...................................................................................................
