Lester Rapaport: Convergence by David Richard Gallery

LESTER RAPAPORT Convergence

DAVID RICHARD GALLERY

ISBN: 978-1-7331016-1-5

Front cover: Installation image of Convergence at David Richard Gallery Title page: Installation image of Convergence at David Richard Gallery Pages 28 - 29: Installation image of Convergence at David Richard Gallery Pages 30 - 31: Installation image of Convergence at David Richard Gallery Back cover: Installation image of Convergence at David Richard Gallery

Printed on the occasion of the exhibition Lester Rapaport: Convergence at David Richard Gallery May 7, 2019 June 8, 2019

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DAVID RICHARD GALLERY

LESTER RAPAPORT Convergence

LESTER RAPAPORT: MEDITATIONS IN AN EMERGENCY

The world is always with us, and even the purest, the most reductive, the most spiritually driven of abstract artists reflect their time, if only by speaking the particular symbolic languages of their era. The pioneer non-objective painters of the modern era, from Kandinsky and Mondrian to Hilma af Klint, very deliberately articulated their inner visions, driven as they were by a Victorian propriety and mystic faith in science. The abstract expressionists hewed to a more reactive gesture, a theatrical sweep that existentially conflated personal and public turmoil. Today, in the face of ecological doom and the loss of faith in institutional integrity, abstract art often seems empty and exhausted; but its most vital practitioners serve as exemplars not of ennui and despair but of forthrightness and rigor. The recent paintings of Lester Rapaport manifest such clarity and honesty. They come from deep inside the artist, but they speak to the world around him with both anger and charm, fright and resolution, loss and rediscovery. By his own account, Rapaport turned from figuration to abstraction at the turn of the 1960s, absorbing the era’s tumultuous sense of experiment but never losing sight of modernist models such as Matisse and Miro. An ensuing decade of personal struggle culminated in a return to painting around 1980, and throughout that decade Rapaport engaged in an increasingly complex exploration of form and color. The discovery – or, more accurately, rediscovery – of spiritual practice, notably meditation, served to cool and simplify Rapaport’s style, until it solidified into the monumental formula(s) upon which his current and recent series are based. The significant thing about these latter-day paintings, no matter what their political or (otherwise) symbolic resonance, is the vastness of their formal potential – not just the potential of the compositional patterning or of the palette, but of the relationship between elements. The given structure that defines any one series, firm as it appears, in fact yields to and supports broad experimentation with placement, color, and shape. Basic planar relationships may be fixed – the single orb may rest to the right of the squared-off source of dripping paint, while the double orb surrounds the square element – but the shifts in color have a visceral impact almost as intense as weather, while variations on the structural formula, no matter how small, change the entire rhythm of the overall image. It is perhaps odd to talk of “rhythm” with regard to these pared-down, emblem-like paintings. But it’s precisely their openness that amplifies shifts in planar relationships (not to mention in hue and tone), making us aware of the “beat” that comes with every deviation from the template. In this regard, Rapaport’s recent paintings take up where the “burst” paintings of Adolph Gottlieb left off. Having refined his Action-painting gesturalism into a stylized, indeed minimized, landscape format, wherein the “sky” was embodied in an orb of some kind and the “earth” in a tangle of brushstrokes, Gottlieb devoted the last two decades of his life to this iconic contraposition. Rapaport’s focus is similarly intense, and even more reliant on the fixity and seeming interchangeability of elements (emphasis on

the “seeming”). Rapaport’s other strong exterior connection in his current work is to Tantric painting, the simple high-chroma abstract designs tantric practitioners in India, Tibet, et al, focused on as visual mantras. The recurrence in Tantric art of certain kinds of forms – ovals, for instance – and on saturated color echoes in series such as “American Nightmare” and “Diogenes at the White House.” As can be intuited from such series titles, the condition not just of the world but of the nation rests heavily on Rapaport’s mind. No meditation changes his view of matters, but changes only his resolve to effect improvement while transcending mundane conditions. For the last decade the twinned practices of painting and meditating have brought Rapaport through the trauma of loss (“Grief and After”), the process of rediscovery and reaffirmation (“A New Chapter”), and social address (as in the series named above). Rapaport does not invite us to “read” his paintings as political statements, however, so much as experience them as spiritual and emotional space. They are not commentary, they are reflection on and refinement of observation. They are bridges, or more to the point conduits, between what is seen (and known) and what is felt. They are also signals from Rapaport to us, inviting us into his realm of experience, a realm distilled into painted apparitions. Thus, the sense of urgency that hovers around Lester Rapaport’s art, offset by an equally emphatic sense of calm resolve. Peter Frank Los Angeles November 2018

Lester Rapaport Affair, 1981 Acrylic on canvas 77” x 76” x 2”

Lester Rapaport She, 1981 Acrylic on canvas 76.5” x 77.5” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Beckers Hero, 1981 Acrylic on canvas 78” x 77” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Indian, 1987 Acrylic on canvas 78” x 77” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Shadow Birth, 1982 Acrylic on canvas 70” x 71” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Worlds, 2014 Acrylic on canvas 54” x 84” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Marion’s Smile, 2015 Acrylic on canvas 54” x 84” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Eyefull, 2014 Acrylic on canvas 54” x 84” x 2 ”

Lester Rapaport Magister Ludi, 2018 Acrylic on canvas 54” x 84” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Untitled, 1982-83 Ink on paper 31â&#x20AC;? x 21.5â&#x20AC;?

Lester Rapaport Untitled, 1985 Acrylic on paper 22.5” x 30”

Lester Rapaport Untitled, 1995 Acrylic on paper 30” x 22.25”

Lester Rapaport Untitled, 1980-81 Acrylic on paper 15” x 20” x 2”

Lester Rapaport Untitled, 1980-81 Acrylic and oil stick on paper 15” x 20” x 2”

About Lester Rapaport: Rapaport (b. 1947), born and raised in New York City, earned his BFA in 1969 and pursued graduate studies at Hunter College. Initially trained and concentrated on figurative painting and drawing, by the late 1960s he switched entirely to abstract painting. The 1970s were a bit of a lost decade for the artist due to health issues and other personal matters. However, he reemerged in the early 1980s and has consistently produced challenging and inter-related series of abstract artworks that he has exhibited mostly in and around New York. His strongest affiliations have been with Westbroadway Gallery in New York and Sideshow Gallery in Brooklyn. Education: 1963-67 Hunter College, B. F. A. 1967 William Graff Scholarship for graduate study 1967-69 Hunter Graduate School, M. A. Program Solo Exhibitions: 2018 David RIchard Gallery 2016 Art Mora Gallery Ridgefield Park, N.J. 2014 Weil Cornel Medical offices, New York City 2010 Paris Health Club, New York City 2009 Paris Health Club, New York City 2007 Paris Health Club, New York City 2004 Verlaine, New York City 1996 Planet Thai, Brooklyn, New York 1987 Wiesner Gallery, Brooklyn, New York 1983 Westbroadway Gallery, New York, New York 1982 Westbroadway Gallery, New York, New York 1981 Westbroadway Gallery, New York, New York 1973 Pollock Gallery, Toronto, Ontario, Canada Group Exhibitions: 2018 Carter Burden Gallery, NYC, NY Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2017 Anthony Philip Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Gallery Giordano, Brooklyn, NY 2016 Art Mora Gallery, NYC, NY Carter Burden Gallery, NYC, NY Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2015 Newark School of the Arts, Newark, NJ Two person show at Carter Burden Gallery, NYC Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2014 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2013 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2012 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2011 Rush Gallery, NYC 2010 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2009 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2008 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Pool art fair at Chelsea hotel, nyc 2007 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 2006 Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY

2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1995-96 1995 1994 1991 1987 1986 1985 1984

Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Dec 11- Jan 11, 2005 Sideshow Gallery Brooklyn, New York Sideshow Gallery Brooklyn, New York Sideshow Gallery Brooklyn, New York Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, New York Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, New York Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, New York Sideshow Gallery, Brooklyn, New York Planet Thai, Brooklyn, New York Planet Thai, Brooklyn, New York Syncro-Energize, New York, New York F. D. R. Gallery, New York, New York Algira Gallery, Newark, New Jersey Trenton City Museum, Trenton, New Jersey Wetherholt Gallery, Washington, D. C. Wiesner Gallery, Brooklyn, New York Williamsburg Music Center, Brooklyn, New York Small Pieces Big Ideas, North 119 Gallery, Brooklyn, New York Art and Ego, New York Academy, New York, New York

Lester Rapaport Untitled, 1991-93 Acrylic on paper 39.25” x 27.25”

DAVID RICHARD GALLERY