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GARY
KOMARIN
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BILL LOWE GALLERY 764 Miami Circle | Suite 210 Atlanta, GA 30324 E: contact@lowegallery.com P: (404) 352-8114 F: (404) 352-0564 HOURS: Tuesday – Friday |10:00 AM – 5:30 PM Saturday |11:00 AM – 5:30 PM Sunday, Monday & Evenings by Appointment. Visit us at the Shops of Miami Circle in The 764 Building.
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BILL
LOWE
GALLERY
For three decades, Bill Lowe Gallery has served as a portal to global visual culture for art enthusiasts around the world. Our unique juxtaposition of style and substance is articulated in exhibitions that embrace universal and eternal considerations with great visual drama. This has earned the gallery recognition as a sanctuary for the cross-cultural intersection of beauty and meaning. The gallery’s philosophical architecture is built upon a reverence for the alchemical nature of artistic expression. Our vision honors the profoundly spiritual nature of visual language and the role it can play in affecting paradigm shifts at both a personal and societal level. It is with this mandate that we have assembled a world-class stable of artists who intuitively have their fingers on the pulse of the Universe. Their expression is not an ironic or satirical look at the human condition. Instead, the gallery’s program presents powerful, content-driven works that utilize technical mastery and a visual eloquence to transform the human heart and soul at intimate levels. Bill Lowe Gallery has become a cultural institution in the Southern United States. Our commitment is to reflect Atlanta’s emergence as the world’s new epicenter of art, science, and technology through a kinetic dialogue with artists and audiences across the globe.
4 Can abstraction avoid becoming “hidebound” in the twenty-first century? Komarin shows us one way in which it can: he breathes quirky new life into abstraction by making it witty. . . . He takes what had become closed systems of geometrical and nongeometrical abstractions and interbreeds them. The result is a kind of hybrid abstraction, less heavy-handed than traditional abstraction but still emotionally serious. It is an overtly hedonistic abstraction, rather than confrontational in the style of the Old Abstract Masters; there is a power in pleasure they, in their Puritanism, could not appreciate. Komarin also has the benefit of after-sight: he orchestrates the whole development of abstraction, bringing its different musical strands together in a sort of grandly ironical musical painting - an ironically symphonic painting not unlike Satie’s witty music. Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York Psychoanalytic Art Critic Dirty White, Lilly Pond Lane Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 67 Inches
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B LUETA K I
Komarin’s painting is a reprise of “thin-skinned” color field painting and “thick-skinned” gestural painting, with geometrical odds and ends added by way of the linear drawings. But it is a delicately clever reprise, opening up new expressive as well as perceptual territory.
Koma r i n’ s sh ap e s lin g e r o n his surfac e, i nviti ng u s t o e n jo y th e ir p a rad ox: c hild -like dra w i n g s a n d p ain t e r ly m arkings in a wit t y a r r a n g e me n t . I n n o c e n c e and sophist ic at ion subli mi na l l y alig n in K o m ar in ’ s paint ing.
Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York
Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 80 x 66 Inches
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G E N E R AL AN E S T H E S I O LOGY
“The wonder of Komarin’s paintings is that they resonate with so much poetry, especially since the artist may be trying to fool us into thinking that they were produced without the slightest fuss or guile.” Dean Jenson, New York 2005
The Principles and Practices of “General” Anesthesiology Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 74 Inches
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B I G PI N K , ROM A
Gary Komarin is a risk taker and considered a Modern master in post painterly abstraction. Komarin’s stalwart images have an epic quality that grips the viewer with the idea that he or she is looking at a contemporary description of something timeless.
For Komarin, abstraction has never been a formal dead end. Rather, it has allowed him to challenge the limitations of the style to make painting ‘include more’ precisely because a recognizable image excludes too much.
Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York
Big Pink Roma | 72 x 74 inches Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas
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T RA P E ZE
( 1998- 99)
Komarin reminds us that abstraction has its roots in Impressionism, and Impressionism is rooted in the preoccupation with the painterly metier implicit in the Realism of Courbet and Manet. Komarin is a modernist painter, that is, he is acutely aware of his medium and takes a certain “critical” stance to the planar surface, but he is also aware that a mode rnist surface that lacks a poetic charge becomes a shallow facade.
Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York
Trapeze| 72 x 60 inches Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas
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RU E, M ADA M E I N RE D
In 1996, Komarin’s work was included in a pivotal exhibition at 41 Greene Street where his work was shown with the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Guston and Bill Traylor. Gary Komarin was invited to show in a catalog exhibition with Robert Mother well and Sir Anthony Caro in Dublin in 2009. One of the paintings in this exhibition was recently acquired by Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma. In 2016, Komarin was invited to show with Joan Mitchell and Manuel Neri in Denver. In 2016, a 60 Minutes Producer, Harry Moses, shot, produced and directed a short documentary film on Gary Komarin titled, The Painter’s Path.
Rue Madame in Red | 72 x 60 inches Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas
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D I RTY WH ITE , S A L IN A
One can call Komarin’s abstract paintings quirky formalism, if one needs a label, but I think it is better to think of them as a smart synthesis of spontaneous gesture, geometric composition, and iconic form, with a certain tendency to monochrome. Donald Kuspit, New York
Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 50 x 44 Inches
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For painter G ar y Komarin , abs traction has never b e en a formal dead- end . Rather, it has allowe d him to challenge the l imit ations of the s t yle, to make painting “ include more” pre cisely b e c ause, to quote Komarin’s early mentor, Phil ip G us ton, a re cognizable image “excludes too much .” While Komarin is not the t yp e to write a manifes to, he embraces the philosophy that intention is but a small fragment of our consciousness , that painting should b e more ab out exp erience than a s t atement of intent . For nearly thre e de c ades Komarin has steadily produce d a se emingly endless re conf igure d vision - s aturate d and loose color f ields punctuate d by drips , splotches , and ghos tly drawn ge ometries - indif ferent to the ebb and f low of t aste. And throughout he has remaine d quite content to allow each viewer “ to bring something dif ferent” to his work .
Mason Kle in - New York , 201 2
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TH E RO A D TO D IA L O RO
At first view, Komarin’s paintings are not easy to digest as there is no single narrative or underlying message, except for the process of painting. But with each examination, the visceral desire for understanding is triggered and one cannot simply walk away.
Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 74 x 66 Inches
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Wide Water, Lantana | Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon,
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, and Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 120 Inches
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Wide Water Lantana ( Rigth Panel
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Wide Water Lantana ( Left Panel
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SUITE OF BLUE, SALINA
There is an irksome tension in the peculiarly “introverted� and sketchy shapes, holding their own as they drift on the flat sea. Its strong underlying current becomes explicit in the meandering lines of A Suite of Blue Sea, a sort of unraveling of the drawn shapes, although the complex of color patches remains intact. The transparency of the drawn shapes and the opaqueness of the color patches makes for another level of formal and expressive tension.
Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York
Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 60 x 48 Inches
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A SUITE OF BLUE SEA
A Suite of Blue Sea makes the landscape anchor of Komarin’s abstraction clear, even as they show it veer energetically towards ironical purity. There are the same gestural patches, now compacted into a sort of composite painterly material. But the drips, the seemingly slapdash brushwork, the flowing together of broad fields of excited color, have an ingenious flair. Purity is pushed toward its contradictory limits - perhaps most evident in the abrupt difference between the large plane and the smaller plane of luminous blue in the latter painting - reminding us of the conflicted consciousness that informs traditional abstraction.
Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York
Acrylic, Oil, Wax Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 72 x 60 Inches
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Wigs and Cakes are among Komarin’s most recognizable idiosyncratic images, often turning up in his paintings. The painting Still Life with the French Wig feature three faceless characters donning wigs of braids and tangled tresses. As stated by the artist, the idea of the wig is to cover up, accentuate, and/or adorn and these qualities relate closely to his process of making a painting. Similarly, in new works on paper, Komarin presents a single oddly shaped cake in an opposing field of color—as homage to his mother, a Viennese baker of less than perfect, but love infused cakes throughout his youth. As a literature major in college, Komarin’s love of words is evident in his painting titles. Taking poetic license, they are meant to spark imagination and rarely explain the work. Rue Madame in Red, The Disappointed Mistress No. 9, and Principles and Practices of General Anethesiology are a few of the enigmatic titles that appeal to Komarin simply for its phonetics and lilt.
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Black and White Cake | Oil on Paper | 51 x 47.5 Inches
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Orange and Creme Cake Oil on Paper | 50 x 24 Inches
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EDUCATION 1975-1977 Boston University, MFA in Painting, Graduate Teaching Fellowship with Philip Guston 1975 Brooklyn Museum School, NY 1974 School of Visual Arts, NY 1973-1974 New York Studio School, NY 1973 Albany State University, BA in Art and English Literature
AWARDS The Joan Mitchell prize in Painting, New York Edward Albee Foundation Fellowship In Painting, New York Elizabeth Foundation Prize in Painting, New York Benjamin Altman Prize in Painting, National Academy of Design Museum, New York The New York Foundation of the Arts Grant in Painting Graduate Teaching Fellowship in Painting, Boston University Graduate School of Fine Arts
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 Bloom: Color, Caress & Seduction, Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2015 ‘Robert Motherwell, Larry Poons, Gary Komarin’, Dublin, Ireland 1996 McEnroe Gallery, ‘Guston, Basquiat, Komarin, Traylor’, New York, NY
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SEL ECT E D S O L O E XHI B I T I O NS 2019 ’Testing Boundaries’, Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2018 Madelyn Jordan Gallery, ‘The Vicomte and Some of His Parts’, New York, NY Bruce Lurie Gallery, ‘Transfiguration’, Los Angeles, CA Robischon Gallery, ‘Swiss Positions’, Denver, CO Kathy Dimmit Fine Arts, ‘The Mother Tongue’, Houston, TX 2017 Julie Nester Gallery, ‘Swimming Pink’, Park City, UT 2016 Robischon Gallery, ‘Mr. Blonde’, Denver, CO Gail Severn Gallery, ‘Gary Komarin, The First Green Rushing’, Ketchum, ID 2015 Mark Borghii Gallery, ‘A Wilder Blue’, Bridgehampton, NY Gallerie Design -e- Space, Don’t Tell LIzzie Borden, Paris Gallerie Baobob, Incident at Osboiurne Grove, Bogota, Columbia Gallery 88, East Meets West, Seoul Korea Madelyn Jordan Gallery, New Paintings and Works on Paper, New York, NY Mark Borghii, Group Exhibition/Selected Works, Palm Beach, Florida 2014 Mini Gallery, New Paintings and Works on Paper, Asissi Italy The Morrison Gallery, Farmers Logic, Kent, Connecticut Galerie Proarta, Komarin, Warhol, Bacon, Arp, Zurich Cuadro Fine Arts, New Paintings and The French Wig, Dubai Mark Borghii, Group Exhibition /Selected New Works, Bridgehampton, New York Gail Severn Gallery, New Paintings, Sun Valley Idaho
2013 Vigo Gallery, In Which the Baron Fallow, London, England Gail Severn Gallery, Jack’s Bridge, Ketchum Idaho Annual Galleries, Solo Exhibition, Paris, France Galerie Proarta, Arp, Motherwell, Komarin and Heilman, Zurich, Switzerland Elins Eagles Smith Gallery, Tapping Reeve, San Francisco, California Gremillion and Co. Fine Arts, The Road so Bare and White, Houston, Texas Cuadro Gallery, The Early Influences, Dubai Lotte Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Seoul, Korea 2012 Hillsboro Gallery of FineArt, Dublin, Ireland States of Feeling: Gary Komarin, Robert Motherwell and Larry Poons Robischon Gallery, Denver, Colorado Bonbright Gallery, Down and Dirty Whites, Los Angeles, California 2011 Galerie Proarta, Zurich, Switzerland Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum Idaho Gremillion and Co. Fine Arts, Houston, Texas 2010 Robischon Gallery, Denver, Colorado Cuadro Gallery, Dubai, United Arab Emerates The Neilson Gallery, Cadiz, Spain 2009 Spanierman Modern, New York, New York Galerie Proarta, Zurich, Switzerland Broadbent Gallery, London, England 2008 Gail Severn Gallery, Blue Scrubbed White, Ketchum, Idaho Kiyoharu Museum, Kiyoharu, Japan The FineArt Society, London, England Gremillion & Company Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
2007 Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, Idaho Spanierman Modern, New York, New York The Goss Gallery, Dallas, Texas Elins Eagles Smith Gallery, San Francisco, California Costello-Childs Gallery, Phoenix, Arizona 2006 Karolyn Sherwood Gallery, Incident at Echo Lake, Des Moines,lowa Galerie Proarta, Zurich, Switzerland SG Modern and Contemporary Fine Arts, New York, New York The Fine Art Society, The Bourdon Gauge, London, England Gremillion & Company Fine Arts, Houston, Texas 2005 Elins Eagles-Smith Gallery, San Francisco, California J. Johnson Gallery, Jacksonville Beach, Florida Donna Tribby Fine Arts, Palm Beach, Florida 2004 Karolyn Sherwood Gallery, Des Moines, lowa Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona Gerald Peters Gallery, Dallas, Texas Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, Canada Hamiltons Gallery, London, England Galerie Proarta, Zurich, Switzerland Broadbent Gallery, London, England Gremillion & Company Fine Arts, Houston, Texas 2003 McGrath Gallery, New York, New York Kraft Leiberman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois Robischon Gallery, Denver, Colorado Kunstart Zurich, Galerie ProArta, Zurich, Switzerland Galerie Proarta, Zurich, Switzerland 2002 Gremillion & Company Fine Arts Houston, Texas Peyton/Wright Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
58 SEL ECT E D M US E U M C O L L E C T IO NS Galeria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO Musee D’Art Classique, Mougins, France Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX Boston University Art Museum, Boston, MA Museum of Contemporary Art, Little Rock, AK Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ The Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ Newark Museum, Newark, NJ Zimmerli Art Museum, New Hyde Park, NY Musee Kiyoharu, Shirabata, Japan
CO RPORA T E AND P R I VA T E C O LLE CTIO NS Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, AK AT&T Corporation, New York, NY Alan Berger, NY Barry Blitt, CT Bashaar Al Shroogi, Dubai Blount Corporation, Atlanta, GA Continental Airlines, Houston, TX Candace Bushnell, NY Christian Levett, Mougins, France Craig Van der Brule Design, NY David Alan Greer, Los Angeles, CA Dick Cavett, NY Doug and Judy Hamilton, NY Faegre & Benson, Des Moines, IA Foundation Yoshii, Tokyo, Japan Garner Tullis, New York, NY and Tuscany, Italy Gisep Biert, President of Morgan Stanley, Zurich, Switzerland Herbert Palmer, Los Angeles, CA Houston Palmer, Los Angeles, CA Houston Memorial Hospital & Medical Center, Houston, TX
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Jeffrey Hoffeld & CO., New York, NY Jennifer Luce, La Jolla, CA Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ John McEnroe, New York, NY John Rubenstein & Associates, Bernardsville, NJ Josh Silverman, CEO of Etsy, NY Julie Rhodes Design, Houston, TX Katherine Newman Design, Toronto, Canada Kimball Museum, Chairperson, Private Collection, Fort Worth, TX Lars Malmberg/Galerie Proarta, Zug, Switzerland Luke Honey, de Pury and Luxembourg, London, England Maison Klein, Curator, Jewish Museum, New York, NY Marian Boesky, New York, NY Margarate Naeve, Houston, TX Maxwell Davidson, New York, NY McDonald’s Corporation, Los Angeles, CA Michael Hoban, London, England Michael Liener, Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, WA Nancy Nordstrom New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Trenton, NJ Newark Public Library, Newark, NJ Nordstrom Coporation, Seattle, WA Norioshi Horiuchi Collection, Seattle, WA Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ Prudential Insurance Company of America, Boston, MA Robert Lamm, Los Angeles, CA Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Ruth O’Hara, New York, NY Segura Press, Tempe, AZ Scott Oki, Seattle, WA Sheila Simonian, New York, NY Steven’s Corporation, Los Angeles, CA Susan Dicker / Dicker Fine Arts, Malibu, CA Tanaka Shiroga, Tokyo, Japan Tandem Press, University of Wisconsin Tim Jeffries, London, England Toby Clarke, Director of The Fine Art Society, London, England Touche/Ross, Inc., Atlanta, GA Transco, Inc., New York, NY Twin Palms Press, Austin, TX United Bank of Houston, Houston, TX Wendy Olsoff, P.P.O.W., New York, NY Zions Bank, Idaho & Utah
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ARTICLES & REVIEWS “Still” Clifford Still Documentary, Interview with Gary Komarin, Amie Knox and Chad Herschberger, 2011 Dining Rooms by the AD 100, Architectural Digest, February 2015 Cover Story: The Art Issue, CT Cottages & Gardens, November 2014 Art in America, May 2008 King, Sarah S., Art in America, July 2003 Brandenberg, Andreas, Zuger Presse, ‘Complex Paintings from Overseas’, Galerie ProArta, 2002 Taylor, Art, ‘Komarin at Lizan Tops’, East hampton Arts, New York, 2002 Schwabsky, Barry, ‘Paintings do the Talking Without Too Many Specifics’, The New York Times, 2000 Grayson, Clive, ‘Gary Komarin at Susan Conway’, The Washington Post, 1995 Waddington, Chris, ‘Subjects Simple but Art Deceptively Sophisticated’, The New Orleans Lagniappe, 1996 Langdon, Davis, ‘French Wig in East Hampton’, Hamptons Gazette, 1998 Foxworth, Janet, ‘Gary Komarin’s The Naming of John Dreamer’, The Atlanta Journal, 1997 Reed, Vincent, ‘Komarin Explores the Painterly’, at Klarfeld Perry Arts Magazine, 1993 Lloyd, Amy, ‘Gary Komarin Shows New Expressive Work at Sandler/Hudson’, Art in America, 1994 Loughery, John, ‘Komarin, The Master of the Elemental Image’ at Maxwell Davidson’, Arts Magazine, 1991 Watson, Edward, ‘Surrealist Loads Canvas’, The New Jersey Star Ledger 1989 Russell, John, ‘The Dog Days of August’, The New York Times, 1987 Zimmer, William, ‘Something-But What?’, The New York Times, 1985 Zimmer, William, ‘A Rich Array…From Newburgh to Newark’, The New York Times, 1985 Everingham, Carol, ‘A Comical View of the American Dream’, The Houston Post, 1982. Perry, Paloma, ‘Stories in Paint’, The Atlanta Journal, 1981 Kutner Janet, ‘Komarin Shows Strong Work’, The Dallas Morning News, 1981 Baker, Ralph, ‘Komarin Paintings and Works on Paper’, the Museum of Art at The University of Oregon, Eugene, catalog essay 1980
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