PAINTING COLOR
Steven Alexander, Siri Berg, Gabriele Evertz, Jane Logemann, Robert Swain, Stephen Westfall, and Sanford Wurmfeld Curated by Susan Bonfils
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This exhibition and catalog is supported by Nadine Carter Russell in memory of Professor Paul A. Dufour. Special thanks to the Matthew Deleget, Minus Space Gallery, Christine Inukai, Peter Hionas, the Hionas Gallery, Mary Shah, the Lennon Weinberg Gallery, the featured artists, Susan Bonfils, Jonathan Meyers, Meg Guidroz, and the members of the Glassell Gallery Group for their assistance and contributions to this project. The Louisiana State University School of Art appreciates Melissa R. Beck, PhD., Paul Dean, Ravi Rau, PhD., Gregory Schufreider, PhD., Stephen Westfall, and Sanford Wurmfeld for their participation in a panel discussion: Painting Color, presented on Sunday, November 13, 2016. This catalog was designed and produced by the LSU School of Art in conjunction with the exhibition Painting Color, curated by Susan Bonfils, and presented at the LSU School of Art Alfred C. Glassell Exhibition Gallery, Baton Rouge, Louisiana October 29, 2016 – January 6, 2017.
DESI GN & PRODUCTION School of Art Galleries Director: Kristin Malia Krolak Project Director: Kitty Pheney Graphic Designer: Danielle Hansch, GDSO (Graphic Design Student Office) Creative Director: Luisa Restrepo PĂŠrez Faculty Advisors: Courtney Barr & Rod Parker Images Courtesy of: Steven Alexander; Siri Berg; Gabriele Evertz; Jane Logemann; Robert Swain and Yao Zu Lu; Stephen Westfall and Lennon, Weinberg, Inc., New York; and Sanford Wurmfeld
College of
Art + Design
School of Art
Nadine Carter Russell
PAINTING COLOR Curated by Susan Bonfils
In memory of Paul A. Dufour, my most beloved art professor. - Nadine Carter Russell.
CURATOR’S NOTE “The purest and most thoughtful minds are those that love color the most.� -John Ruskin This exhibition would not be what it is without the gracious lending of the
exhibited together. Part of what interested me was to see such closeness
artwork by the artists. It is an honor to have had the opportunity to work
and yet such difference in their systematic pursuits of color. It is precisely
with such dedicated and talented people.
the subtle distinctions that intrigued me and led me to wonder what a
The main intention of this exhibition was to bring together a group of
grouping of such strong work would do, if put together in the same room.
artists that, as non-objective painters with a strong concrete sensibility,
What intensities would be brought out of each as amplified their differences
had all been pursuing color as the central subject of painting. The original
from one another?
selection process was designed to eliminate as much possible the aspects
Since, as I write this note for the catalogue, the exhibition has not
of the tradition that would distract from this aim, concentrating on an
been installed, I will have to rely on my intuitive sense that the extra-
abstract art that was non-compositional, non-textural, non-narrative, etc.
ordinary quality of these works will shine even more brightly when they
The beauty of certain paintings, however, made it impossible for me to omit
shine together.
entirely works having compositional and textural elements. All of these artists live in the New York City area with the exception
In closing, I would like to thank the sponsorship of Nadine Clark Russell for her generous donation that made this all possible.
of Steven Alexander, who is from Pennsylvania and they are all members
Many thanks go to Kristin Malia Krolak for inviting me to curate this
of the American Abstract Artists group, except for Sanford Wurmfeld.
exhibition. It has been her generosity and dedication to this project, providing
They know each other, live in the same neighborhoods, have worked and
the utmost freedom along the way, that has made it a pleasure to do.
By Susan Bonfils
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WHAT PARACHUTE IS YOUR COLOR?
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Color is light, or more accurately, light waves of different lengths, picked
pushed earth tones and mixed greys largely aside. Much of the theoretical
up by the retina and nearly instantly conveyed to the brain as red, yellow,
groundwork for Impressionist, Nabis, Divisionist, Fauve, and Expressionist
blue, the ghastly greys of pigeon poop and the plush violet of an iris.
color was laid out in 1839 by the great French chemist Michel Chevreul.
These light waves are measurable, even regulated and patented by paint
Chevreul showed how complementary colors placed together could create
manufacturers. Color is tied to material and things because it is the result
vibrating “ghost” colors and developed theories of simultaneous contrast
of light reflecting off of that material. And yet, even though color may be
that influenced Van Gogh, Seurat, and Pissarro, among many others.
the first or second thing we notice about things (does scale come first or
What we call abstract painting was born out of a zeitgeist wherein
second?) it is the most immaterial attribute of that thing. It has no weight
Symbolist poetics and philosophical inquiries into perception braided the
or texture, it is constantly rising out of things and departing from them, it
psychological potency of myth with diagrammatic descriptions of verifiable
is fugitive rather than intrinsic. Furthermore, we can never know that what
“invisible” worlds at the cosmological and microscopic polarities of scale. So
our neighbor knows as “red” is what we ourselves know to be red. And one’s
diagrams were not so divorced from feeling as they might seem. A chakra
taste in color may be very different from another’s. Bridget Riley’s taste in
chart might uncannily resemble a light spectrum analysis. There was surge
color, as best as I can determine, runs “cooler” than my own predilection for
of interest in synesthesia, the condition wherein a subject experiences
“warmth.” Your mileage may vary.
sensorial crossover between actual sensations or concepts (the numeral 5 is
What we can all probably agree on is that something began to change
yellow for me, for other synesthetes it might be blue). Kandinsky famously
in the mid 19th century with respect to color in Western painting, though
came to his abstraction after experiencing being submerged in a cloud of
it’s difficult to put a finger on exactly where the change began. This
yellow while listening to a concert of his friend, Schoenberg’s music. The
change was the result of shifting aesthetics in response to a combination
theosophy that so influenced Mondrian and Yeats looked to models of
of developments in science, trade (Japonisme!), philosophy, religion and
scientific and scholarly exegesis to address the yearning for contact with
politics. By the end of the century, “advanced” painting was in the hands
otherwise invisible realms that religion had provided.
of artists who had pushed out of late Baroque chiaroscuro (the use of
Painters began mixing complementary colors in asymmetrical
defining shadow and highlights) and the plein air middle values of mixed
amounts (a little red in the green, etc.) to produce higher key colors that
complementary colors deployed by the Barbizon school of landscape
knit together optically, as in a number of Fauvist paintings where these
painters, into a new and powerful use of high-intensity spectrum color that
colors are distributed over a lead white ground. In 1906 Matisse came away
from Italy deeply impressed by Giotto’s frescos and saw their large areas
gradations of color to their own equally grand ends. Steven Alexander,
of blue and red as historical prototypes for the expansive areas of flat color
Gabriele Evertz, and I have different but related ideas about destabilizing
in such paintings as Dance I (1909), Dance II (1910), Music (1910), and, perhaps
geometric composition, even as our palettes are utterly distinct from each
ultimately, The Red Studio (1911), though the allover red of this painting was
other’s. Jane Logemann’s paintings offer quite different readings of color
arrived at intuitively after trial and error, as opposed to the more schematic
and process from close up to further away, merging into monochrome
certainty of the earlier paintings. Ultimately, sign and house paints began to
clouds of hue at a distance while separating at close range into deeply
be mixed in such a fashion and painters such as Stuart Davis began to draw
hand-rendered experiences of process that seem both organic and mineral.
inspiration from the way sign colors could hold a light across reaches of
Siri Berg charts spectrum ranges of color like Swain and Wurmfeld, but in
space. In fact, the optical power of shop and highway signs is arguably more
proportionately larger modules of single monochrome canvases comprising
of a theme in 20 century American painting than European. You can “get”
a larger whole, concentric diamonds, or gridded patterns of circular areas of
certain paintings by Ellsworth Kelly, Frank Stella, Ken Noland, Sol Lewitt,
color. Berg’s interior imagery provides with Logemann’s process references
or Elizabeth Murray from across the street, or further. This is the space of
to natural patterning and, perhaps, Alexander’s “magic hour” palette, a whiff
signage, billboards, the long approach, and it may very well have been an
of Symbolism’s continued presence amidst the diagrammatic paradigm.
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apprehension based on the distance across which billboard scale signs are
It’s a funny position to have been curated into this terrific company
intended to telegraph a coherent message, like the eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckelberg
of colorists and then to be asked to write something about color. I cannot
from The Great Gatsby. It is also the space and scale of painted addresses and
speak for anyone else in the show. Their own thoughts about color are as
merges with architecture.
pertinent and singular as mine. As a synesthete, I experience color as taste
Interestingly, color and scale function in a similar fashion in Renaissance frescoes, as the cleaning of the Sistine Chapel ceiling revealed, and even earlier, in Byzantine frescoes and mosaics, and later in Baroque frescoes. In Baroque oil painting, however, it was as though a shadow sank into
and climate in simultaneity with its optics. There are palettes here for every palate. Dig in.
By Stephen Westfall
painting and stayed there for nearly four hundred years before lifting in the “modern” era. In our climate of post-apocalyptic wish casting it doesn’t take a wild leap of the imagination to imagine the shadow paradigm returning. For now let us breathe the clear air. Paintings are also intimate, inviting us to inspect their surfaces from close up. They live in the back and forth, as do the works of the artists in this exhibition. They are all Modernist colorists, even as their approaches to the deployment of color, its temperature and area, are particular. Most of their compositions start with and sometimes break down the diagram as model. Robert Swain and Sanford Wurmfeld hew to an even grid, but distribute
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PHYSICS OF COLOR In physics and astronomy, color is a term for the frequency, or equivalently,
only two colors. It is a story of biological evolution that with monkeys, and
wavelength, of visible light. Visible light that our eyes are sensitive to
later primates, apes, and us, we regained a third color, lost by mammalian
makes up a tiny slice of electromagnetic waves, which are periodically-
ancestors who were nocturnal.
varying electric and magnetic fields that propagate through empty space or a material medium. The time period, or its inverse called the frequency, denoted by the Greek letter ν (nu) and measured in cycles per second, can
The Electromagnetic Spectrum Radio
Microwave
Infrared Visible Ultraviolet
Gamma Ray
X-Ray
range from the very smallest to the very largest values. At the former end are radio waves whereas at the latter are x-rays and gamma rays. Although the entire “spectrum” is accessible to our instruments, our eyes 106
only register a very small band of intermediate frequencies. Since the wave advances by one wavelength, denoted by the Greek λ (lambda) in each time period, the speed of propagation which is the speed of light, c, is given by c = λν. This speed is a universal constant, very nearly 300 million m/s (meters per second). For the visible range, it is customary to use λ although frequency would be an entirely equivalent measure, and the human eye is sensitive from about 400 nm to 700 nm (nm: nanometer = billionth of a meter), the former blue and the latter red in color. The human eye has in its retina receptors called rods that are sensitive to the intensity of light and cones that respond to frequency or color. Three types of cones with peak sensitivity at different λ are taken as the “primary” colors of red, blue, and green. All the colors of the rainbow are formed by combining these three basic colors. Some birds, reptiles, and amphibians have a “four-color system,” with an additional fourth sensor in the ultraviolet, whereas most mammals sense
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Frequency
1012
1014
1017 (hertz)
10-1
Wavelength
10-5
10-6
10-9
1020
(meters)
Longer waves
10-12 Shorter waves
Lower frequency
Higher frequency
About the size of...
Football Field
Buildings
Baseball
Paperclip Thickness
Cells
Bacteria
Molecules
Atom
Atomic Nuclei
The association of color with λ or ν is only the simplest and first step. Our perception of color itself involves much more complicated physiological and psychological aspects, light intensity, contrast, and context also involved in that full story.
By Ravi P. Rau
SEEING COLOR This exhibition is not about painting hard-edged areas of color or even the
we saw them, or that it was described to us. No matter the lighting, the
paintings themselves. It all comes down to the experience of color by the
weather conditions or the time of day or night, our intellectual overdrive
viewer, whether the viewer is the painter or any of us.
tells us that this color remains the same.
These paintings are non-objective and do not easily translate into
It doesn’t, of course. We say the sky is blue, and so we see it as blue. Is
story lines. Words and our internal trains of consciousness do not work
there ever a vast swatch of green along the horizon after sunset? Is the sky
here. When confronted with color that is unmoored from the world and
ever completely clad in tints and shades of green? We say that shadows
our conventional thought processes, we’re not sure what to think.
are grey, but are they ever actually grey? Is this somehow related to the
We don’t often think consciously about colors themselves, but we actively process them on an unconscious level and our bodies definitely feel them. We are constantly being emotionally and even physically manipulated by the colors around us. The direct experience of color and light transcends language. It
way we remember old friends, even as we speak to them in person, as their younger selves? The brilliance of this exhibition is that the artists have eliminated any trace of the objective world. We are confronted with and forced to surrender to the direct experience of color and ultimately light.
functions at a level deeper than thought. Our conscious mind filters out the
This experience was probably associated with the spiritual long before
subtle and even many of the quite dramatic color changes that constantly
Zoroaster proclaimed that the best metaphor for Ahura Mazda, the first
occur around us.
monotheistic god, was light itself.
This phenomenon is called “color constancy”. We tend to intellectually remember things as being the same color that they were the first time
By Paul Dean
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Steven ALEXANDER My work explores the constant flux of sensory events. I am interested in the interaction between the painting and the viewer’s sensibility, and in the painting’s potential to generate unspecified mobile meaning. Color operates in this work (and in the world) as a kind of pure energy— dynamic, capricious, evocative. The surfaces emphasize the sensual nature of the painting process, translucent layers accumulating to create a specific timbre. The simple iconic configurations propose or imply archetypal tensions and dualities as interdependent aspects of an animate whole. I am trying to build, out of color and substance, a place for the viewer’s consciousness—where unexpected resonances may occur, and where the stuff of life and love has corporeal presence—potential states of being, embodied in paint.
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Transfer Acrylic on canvas 50 in x 40 in 2012
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Palm 4 Acrylic on canvas 36 in x 26 in 2014
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Voice 1 Acrylic on canvas 60 in x 42 in 2015
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Chameleon 5 Oil on linen 16 in x 12 in 2016
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Siri BERG Throughout my career as an artist one of my main interests has always been that of Color. The pieces shown here span over 30 years of my work. While they are all stylistically different they have one underlying connection— the power of Color. It can create a mood, conjure a long lost memory, or take you to a different planet.
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The White Series Acrylic on canvas 18 in x 18 in 1977
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Kabala 2 Acrylic on canvas 42.5 in x 42.5 in 1985
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Pandora’s Box Framed Collage 35.5 in x 92 in 1993
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It’s All About Color I Acrylic on canvas 20 in x 102 in (9 - 20 in x 10 in panels) 2010
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Gabriele EVERTZ Emphasizing color intensity and existential expression, my work has as its goal a certain kind of rapture. The history and theory of color serve as organizing tools. I am interested in the sensation and perception of color interactions. Simple geometric elements function as basic formal units, or color situations, and are intended to de-emphasize references to objects. Aesthetic content is derived from precisely painted diagonals consisting of up to eight different tonal grays that are combined with intensely chromatic sequences of vertical narrow bands, ordered in progressions, often revealing temporal effects of luminous sensations of light. In planning my work, I intentionally keep the presence of the observer in mind. The sudden perception of color shifts and light emanations that come with immersive viewing are the rewards, the painting bestows on us. Vision, feeling, and thought come together in the receptive viewer who becomes a partner, thus completing the meaning of the painting.
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Above: Untitled Acrylic on paper (vellum) 18 in x 24 in 2009 Opposite Page: Six Grays Plus RYB Acrylic on canvas 72 in x 96 in 2006
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The Black Room Series (For Sonia D.) Acrylic on canvas 60 in x 60 in 2013
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(A-) Chromatic + V Acrylic on canvas 24 in x 24 in 2015
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Jane LOGEMANN I have always been receptive to symmetrical patterns and color in nature.
as Japanese, Hebrew, French, Russian, Arabic, or Korean, I want to suggest
This has served as the fundamental material for my work. My sensitivity
the power and universal mystery that surrounds language. The connections
to intricate, micro linear symmetries in plants, insects, rock pattern,
between my abstract paintings and my work in different languages reside
snowflakes, organic materials and many more personal objects and
in their systems and the intuitive manner in which they are executed. The
subjects became the basis for my work. The microcosm was my universe.
materials and the results are different but they share a core that is essential
The use of letters from different languages is then a logical evolution from
for me, i.e., repetition and the poetry of abstraction. The link between the
my early micro linear work in abstract painting and drawings. Because
paintings and the language work is that both are abstract. My work
letters are linear and represent sound-making elements in language, I
has a spiritual depth of continual movement and evolves into a visual
wanted to present this in a visual, concrete way, like concrete poetry. By
affirmation of optimism and hope for a different and refreshing way
borrowing a letter or word from another language or writing system such
of seeing and being.
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Untitled Watercolor on arches 15 in x 11 in 2014
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Yellow Oil on canvas 78 in x 60 in 2014
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Red Oil on canvas 78 in x 60 in 2015-16
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Blue Oil on canvas 78 in x 60 in 2016
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Robert SWAIN Color as Content in Painting French painters, he would continue, may have seen a rainbow. Nature
generates feeling; a physiological change produced by the wavelength
may have given them some taste for nuance, some sense of color. But
(energy), of a particular color or colors. The energy which emanates from
I have revealed to you the great and true principles of art. I say of art! of
green is distinctly different from the wavelengths that define red. In some
all the arts, gentlemen, and of all the sciences. The analysis of colors, the
cultures, pure red is associated with danger. Feelings and attitudes created
calculation of prismatic refractions, give you the only exact relations
by the aggressive, radiate energy, which is unique to the red part of the
in nature, the rule of all relations. And everything in the universe is
spectrum. When pure red is altered, its emotional attributes change, as in
nothing but relations. Thus one knows everything when one knows how
the stability associated with red earth colors, or the whimsical fluctuation
to paint; one knows everything when one knows how to match colors.
produced by pink. In this sense, color transmits feeling(s) through the
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, from The Essay on the Origin of Languages
perception of energy (wavelengths) from the electromagnetic spectrum.
Color is a form of energy derived from the electromagnetic spectrum
Freed from cultural restraints, red can be experienced by itself as a
that stimulates our perceptual processes and is instrumental in conveying
phenomenon, which possesses substantial content. When red is placed
emotions. In some instances, color is culturally encoded, projecting content
next to green, the contrast is heightened, as M. E. Chevreul has observed,
through symbolism or associations. The origin for such references are
and the experience resides in the energy generated by the convergence of
found in the way that the energy (wavelengths), from a particular color,
these unique spectral wavelengths.
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Untitled (Study for 8x8) Acrylic on panel 24 in x 24 in 2012
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Untitled (8x8 Red Complement) Acrylic on canvas 96 in x 96 in 2012
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Untitled, 5x5-3A Acrylic on canvas 60 in x 60 in 2015
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Untitled, 7x7-5B Acrylic on canvas 84 in x 84 in 2015
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Stephen WESTFALL I think a lot about the relationship between painting and architecture. I
To deal with the structuring role of color, I studied Matisse, Mondrian,
would like my paintings to be regarded as expressions of energy and place.
and Albers. Matisse was perhaps the most absorbing, which is why I don’t
When I was an adolescent, I was fascinated by the social spaces
paint like him. But he is somebody I think about a lot, in the way that I guess
adjudicated by architecture. At the age of twelve I was bringing home books
Ellsworth Kelly thinks about Matisse and doesn’t paint like him, either.
about Louis Kahn, Corbusier and Luis Barragan, architects who carved up
It’s there in the work if you can imagine Matisse doing hard edge painting
space with colored walls. Barragan was more polychromatic, but even
- something that he wouldn’t have done - but the thing about historical
white was a color for Corbusier, who also added color to his interior walls
distance is that you can do a mash-up like that.
in his chapel masterpiece, Notre Dame de Haut.
Over the course of the last decade, I wanted my work to address
As a student, I loved “60’s” American abstract painting because it
architecture more directly and wall paintings seemed a way to fuse
seemed to address interior space with the same forthrightness that the
paintings to architectural scale. I regard the wall paintings now as being as
architects I admired addressed exterior space. In my work, color as area
essential to my artistic practice as my paintings on canvas and paper, which
became something to pay close attention to.
are bound by more conventional notions of portability and transferability.
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Left: Live for Tomorrow Oil and alkyd on canvas 47 in x 59 in 2010
Right: Demimonde Oil and alkyd on canvas 30 in x 30 in 2014
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Left: Avalon Oil and alkyd on canvas 30 in x 24 in 2014 Right: Three Kings Oil and alkyd on canvas 66 in x 78 in 2015
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Sanford WURMFELD I think the semantic connotation of the viewer is uncontrollable by the artist. We each bring to the paintings some kind of baggage that is far from universal, and so each of these paintings has a different emotional content. I mean emotional as an almost visceral response, rather than a feeling you would name with words. I recognize that it’s there, but I don’t think it’s something that I’m particularly controlling for the viewer. I’m just creating something that creates a kind of visceral response in me. And then it may or may not have that kind of response in other people. Sanford Wurmfeld interview with Theresa Andrea Morrison, October 11, 2012; Sanford Wurmfeld: Color Visions 1966-2013 catalog, Hunter College Times Square Gallery, 2013.
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Left: CMYK Series A No. 1 Transparent acrylic on paper 12.13 in x 9 in 2010-11 Right: CMYK Series A No. 2 Transparent acrylic on paper 12.13 in x 9 in 2010-11
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II-27 #1B (Y-BG-V) Acrylic on gesso primed cotton 42 in x 81 in 2003
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11-15 LT (Y-V) Acrylic on gesso primed cotton 90 in x 50.5 in 2012
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II-15 DK (Y-V) Acrylic on gesso primed cotton 90 in x 50.5 in 2012
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ABOUT THE ARTISTS STEVEN ALEXANDER
GABRIELE EVERTZ
Steven Alexander was born in west Texas in 1953. He holds an MFA from Columbia
Gabriele Evertz was born in Berlin, Germany. She has exhibited her work in solo
University, where he studied with Richard Pousette-Dart and Dore Ashton, and
and group exhibitions both in the United States and internationally, including in
a BA from Austin College, where he studied with Vernon Fisher. His work has
Argentina, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, and New Zealand. Her recent
been exhibited and collected extensively throughout the United States and
museum exhibitions include P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/ Museum of Modern
abroad, with recent one-person shows at David Findlay Jr Gallery in New York,
Art (MoMA), Heckscher Museum of Art, Hillwood Art Museum, Columbus Museum
David Richard Gallery in Santa Fe, and Gremillion & Co. Fine Art in Houston. Mr.
of Art, Ulrich Museum, Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Brattleboro Museum
Alexander has been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and
of Art, Southwest Minnesota State University Art Museum, Schneider Museum
the Belin Foundation, and a studio residency at PS 1 Contemporary Art Center, as
of Art, Museum of the Aragonese Castle of Otrano, Mies van der Rohe Haus, and
well as numerous public commissions. He has been Artist-in-Residence at Studio
the Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum. Her most recent solo show took place at Minus
Art Centers International in Florence, and Visiting Artist at Bowdoin College
Space, Brooklyn, NY. A three-person exhibition is upcoming in Summit, NJ.
and Parsons School of Design. Currently Professor of Visual Arts at Marywood University, he maintains a home and studio in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania.
Her work is included in many public collections worldwide, including the British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, Harvard University Art Museum, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum,
SIRI BERG
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, The New York Public
Siri Berg was born in Stockholm, Sweden. She studied at the Institute of Art and
Library, The Mississippi Museum of Art, New Jersey State Museum, Parrish Art
Architecture at the University of Brussels before immigrating to the United States
Museum, The Phillips Collection, The Princeton University Library, St. Lawrence
at the age of 19. She worked briefly in interior design until she began pursuing her
University Art Museum, Stiftung für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst, Ulrich
true passion - Painting and Color.
Museum of Art, Wilhelm Hack Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and
Siri taught Color Theory at Parsons School of Design for over 30 years. Her
recently, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires. Her work has been
work is in the collections of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York;
reviewed in publications, such as artcritical, Art in America, NY Arts Magazine,
Southwest Minnesota State University Art Museum MN; New York University,
Artnews, ArtSlant, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Houston
New York; Gray Art Gallery, NYU, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm,
Press, The New Criterion, the Village Voice and The Wall Street Journal.
Sweden (Museum of Modern Art); and many more. She has shown nationally and
In addition to her painting practice, Evertz is a Professor of Art in the
internationally, including 3 recent shows in her native Sweden. She has lived and
Department of Art and Art History at Hunter College, where she is one of the key
worked in New York City’s SoHo district since 1982.
practitioners in the renowned Hunter Color School. Over the past ten years, she has
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also curated and co-curated critically acclaimed artist retrospectives and surveys
current series by displaying them undisguised on the painted surface. The myriad
of abstract painting at Hunter College. She is the author of catalogue essays on
decisions that must be made as she carries on her aesthetic inquiry, comprise the
color in abstract painting and the artists Antoni Milkowski and Robert Swain
most individual and intimate ones that she or any artist has to face.
among others.
Logemann’s concept is to eliminate predetermined given forms as such.
In 2012 Evertz received The Basil Alkazzi Award for Excellence in Painting,
Confettis of color suffuse the More from Less works and characterize their visual
NYFA, NY. In 2005, 2003, and 2002 she received a DAAD grant Evertz holds an MFA
grammar. Created in series, comparisons among the works and how they differ
in Painting and a BA in Art History, both from Hunter College.
are fulfillingly instructive. The textured abstractions consist of an interplay of repetitive brush marks of variegated hues that swarm and dance together, slowly
JANE LOGEMANN
or energetically, mingle and press against one another, distance themselves
Jane Logemann was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She attended the Layton School
and disperse over the pictorial surface. Colors too congregate, dissipate, and
of Art and received her BA from the University of Wisconsin. She lives and works
scatter. The small marks of sundry hues are a rhythmic and singular descendant
in NYC. Long committed to abstraction, over the last three decades Logemann has
of pointillism. Logemann disintegrates or negates previous forms of larger
developed several series of work always attentive to the basic elements of visual
brushstrokes by using smaller marks over them to create a pulsating tension
abstraction. She focuses on the intuitive and sometimes symbolic placement
with her saturated colors. She has allowed the layered bits of color, laid atop one
of lines for balance, simplicity and color. Her work has been the subject of solo
another with these increasingly small strokes, to taper off at the edges so the
exhibitions, including Abstraction & Language: A Dialogue, at La Maison Francaise,
technique by which she achieves her rich tapestry of strata is apparent. So she
The French Embassy, Washington D.C. Her work can be found in public and private
invites the viewer to see and understand her investigations and how she distills
collections which include the Jewish Museum, NYC, the Morgan Library, Yale
her work, making, indeed, less from more. What she does, the procedures by
University Art Gallery.
which she creates her paintings are both generously demystified, and yet the results are endlessly and mysteriously surprising and unforeseen. These are not
Jane Logemann: The Less from More Series In a playful but telling variant of the famous “Less is More” modernist proclamation of the last century that emphasizes the importance of simplicity, the
mechanically made paintings, but deeply personal works. Aimée Brown Price, Art Historian, critic, curator, author, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (inter alia), 2016
elimination of folderol and the elaborate, ornate and ornamental in art in favor of
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quintessentials, the artist Jane Logemann has characterized her latest paintings
ROBERT SWAIN
as adhering to a “Less from More” aesthetic. The modified phrase underscores
Robert Swain was born in Austin, Texas, in 1940, and grew up in Arlington, Virginia.
the process undertaken to produce her work. The motto, with a “from” now
During high school in the late 1950s, he spent his summers in Guatemala and
substituted, focuses attention on making something sparser and more selective
Nicaragua working on the Pan-American Highway. He attended The American
out of “more,” and the infinite choices every artist makes in picking and wielding
University in Washington, DC, where he later received a BA in Fine Art in 1964.
visual elements. Color and touch, the most fundamental components of painting,
During his undergraduate studies, he spent two years in Madrid, Spain, studying
are at the heart of Logemann’s works. Intent on exploring the range of possibilities
at the University of Madrid. In 1964, he moved to Provincetown, Massachusetts,
in presenting and combining these two basic elements, Logemann begins in the
and worked as a studio assistant to the American Modernist painter Karl Knaths.
Swain moved to NYC in 1965 where he permanently settled in Manhattan’s
In addition to his artistic work, Swain taught in the Department of Art & Art
Tribeca neighborhood. In 1966, Swain began his first color-based work followed
History at Hunter College from 1968-2014, where he educated and mentored
a year later by his first work utilizing the grid. He participated in his first group
countless generations of artists. For his teaching, he was awarded the Distinguished
exhibition, Light and Line, organized by John Baldwin at the legendary Park Place
Teaching of Art Award from the College Art Association in 1998.
Gallery in NYC in 1967. That same year he met sculptor Tony Smith who became
In 2010, Swain was the subject of a major 45-year survey exhibition entitled
his close friend and mentor for many years. In 1969, Swain began to develop his
Visual Sensations: The Paintings of Robert Swain curated by Gabriele Evertz at
own color system, a project that continues until today. Swain has exhibited his
Hunter College/Times Square Gallery, NYC.
work nationally and internationally for more than 45 years. His paintings have been included in countless landmark exhibitions. He participated in the seminal exhibition Art of the Real curated by Eugene Goossen at the Museum of Modern Art, NYC, in 1968. The exhibition traveled for the next two years to the Grand Palais, Paris, France; Kunsthaus, Zurich, Switzerland; and The Tate Gallery, London, England. Swain exhibited in The Structure of Color
In 2014, he installed a major museum exhibition of large paintings entitled The Form of Color at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA, curated by Jeffrey Uslip. During 2015 he had a solo exhibition at Minus Space, in Brooklyn, New York, entitled Color Energy, organized by Rosanna Martinez and Matthew Deleget. In 2016 Swain exhibited a series of “Brush Stroke Painting” at the Nina
curated by Marcia Tucker at the Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, in 1971.
Freudenheim Gallery, in Buffalo, New York entitled: The Sensations of Color.
In 1974, he mounted his first solo museum exhibition at The Everson Art Museum,
Additional information concerning his work can be found on his website:
Syracuse, New York. In 1974, he participated in Color as Language curated by
wwwrobertswainnyc.com
Kynaston McShine and organized by the International Council of the Museum of Modern Art, which traveled throughout Central and South America, including to
STEPHEN WESTFALL
the Museo de Arte Moderno, Bogota, Colombia; Museo de Arte Moderno de Sao
Stephen Westfall (b. 1953) received his MFA in 1978 from the University of
Paulo, Brazil; Museo de Arte Moderno, included in the Corcoran Biennial at The
California, Santa Barbara. His first solo show was at Tracey Garet in New York’s
Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC (1969, 1998).
East Village in 1984. Exhibitions followed during the 1980s and 90s at Daniel
Swain’s work is represented in nearly 300 public and private collections,
Newburg Gallery, New York; Galerie Paal, Munich, Germany; Galerie Wilma Lock,
including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Walker Art
St. Gallen, Switzerland; Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York; and Galerie Zurcher,
Center, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Milwaukee Art Museum, Denver Art Museum,
Paris, France. Westfall has been represented by Lennon, Weinberg since 1997 and
Detroit Institute of Art, Everson Art Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,
has had seven exhibitions at their locations in Soho and Chelsea in New York. He
and Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, among others. He has completed major
had his first show with David Richard Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 2015
commissions for IBM, Johnson & Johnson, American Republic Insurance Company,
and has recently collaborated with Polly Apfelbaum on exhibitions presented at
Schering Laboratories, Harris Bank, Travenol Laboratories, Tupperware World
Clement & Schneider in Bonn, Germany in 2014 and at The Suburban in Milwaukee,
Headquarters, and the University of Buffalo.
Wisconsin in 2015, where he showed rugs recently woven under his direction in
He has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts (1976, 1989), New York State Council on the Arts, and the City University of New York.
Oaxaca, Mexico. Westfall’s work has been included in several important thematic exhibitions of abstract paintings, including Conceptual Abstraction at the Hunter College
51
Art Gallery in 2012. Survey exhibitions of his work were presented at Colgate
essays: one on the visual experiences of Canaletto’s paintings and the other on
University in 2000 and Western Carolina University in 1999.
Gifford’s use of colour. These were presented as lectures to his students. Other
He installed his first monumental wall paintings at Solvent Space in
essays were beginning to be published: ‘From Surface Color to Luminous Film
Richmond, Virginia in 2007, followed by others at the American Academy in Rome
Color in Abstract Painting’, in Structured Color, 1995, an exhibition catalogue of
in 2010, and a permanent work installed at the Mason Gross Performing Arts
work by Albers, Stanczak and Anuszkiewicz at Wake Forest University; ‘Color in
Center at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 2014. An exhibition
Abstract Painting’, in Color for Science, Art and Technology, 1998, edited by Kurt
at Art OMI in 2014 featured two very large wall paintings. He was commissioned
Nassau; and ‘Color Painters/Color Painting’, in Color Perception, 2000, edited by
by the Museum of Art, Architecture and Design at the University of California
Steven Davis. These publications brought him into further contact with colour
Santa Barbara in 2015 to create a permanent outdoor wall painting and a second
enthusiasts: art historians, critics, other artists and theorists around the world.
large work for the museum’s Nachman Gallery. A wall painting installation in the
Most recently his essay on Seurat’s drawings was published in Master Drawings.
AT&T Lobby at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas remains on view through July 2016.
From 1999 to 2003, Wurmfeld was invited to be the External Examiner for the Glasgow School of Art program in painting, requiring two trips a year to Scotland.
Works by the artist are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American
Through an associate of Fehr, Wurmfeld was introduced to lain Boyd Whyte
Art in New York, the Kemper Museum in Kansas City, the Louisiana Museum in
and subsequently to Duncan Macmillan. They were enthusiastic about bringing
Humlebaek, Denmark, the Munson Williams Proctor Museum in Utica, New York,
Cyclorama 2000 to Scotland because they appreciated his work and they enjoyed
the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the UBS
the fact that the panorama had been invented ivn Edinburgh. An exhibition was
Art Collection.
arranged, curated by MacMillan, and sponsored in part by the Dunard Fund to be
Westfall has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for
held at the Talbot Rice Gallery in 2004.
the Arts, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Nancy Graves Foundation,
Sanford Wurmfeld was appointed the Phyllis and Joseph Caroff Professor of
and the Guggenheim Foundation. He received a Rome Prize Fellowship and spent
Fine Art at Hunter College in 2000. In 2006 he resigned as Chair of the Department.
a year at the American Academy in Rome during 2009 and 2010. He is a professor
He still teaches his Color Seminar and works with students as part of the MFA and
at the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University and in the graduate
MA programs in the Art Department. He continues to be intrigued by cycloramas,
program at Bard University. He is a Contributing Editor at Art in America.
recognizing the panorama format as the ultimate means of investigating issues of colour, form, duration and scale in relation to human visual experience. In 2006 he
52
SANFORD WURMFIELD
set out to create the E-Cyclorama based on an ellipse or oval plan. The model of this
In the 1980s, Sanford Wurmfeld had started writing more about his ideas on
new piece was shown in the Museum of the Panorama Mesdag, The Hague, during
art. His first essays were included in the catalogues for the shows he curated
fall, 2006, and presented to the International Panorama Conference there. He
at the time. During a sabbatical in 1991, he wrote an essay called ‘Revolutions in
hopes that the sense of floating or ‘film colour’ will be even greater in the full-scale
Time’ which was delivered as a lecture to the MFA program that year, and soon
version. He discovered from his own experience of the completed Cyclorama 2000
afterwards at Princeton University. As a result of his seeing the Canaletto and the
that being in such a space surrounded by colour creates unpredictable results and
Sanford Robinson Gifford exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum, he wrote two
feelings. He looks forward to discovering what these may be in the E-Cyclorama.