COLOR THEORY
COLOR THEORY JIMI GLEASON ANDY MOSES NELLIE KING SOLOMON JEREMY THOMAS JENNIFER WOLF
Project Room: DONALD MARTINY
Bentley Gallery Exhibition January 15th - March 13th 2021
BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com
Color Theory is an exhibition of notable artists who use color in distinctly unique styles to create a bold new vision. Artists include Jimi Gleason, Andy Moses, Nellie King Solomon, Jeremy Thomas, Jennifer Wolf and in the Project Room, Donald Martiny. Furthering the dialogue within contemporary abstraction and its inescapable relationship with color, these artists prove that what color can convey is boundless and sure to captivate. Whether it’s Gleason’s use of lush, reflective material to accentuate the surface, Solomon’s gestural marks made with custom tools, Moses’ process driven hue amalgamations, Thomas’ sculptural color motifs, Wolf’s pure pigment experimentations or Martiny's gestural abstractions, the use of color is essential in their practice and self evident in the work.
JIMI GLEASON
The surfaces of Jimi Gleason’s paintings have always responded to both the light and space of the environment they are in. Working with shimmery pearlescent paint, he carefully builds up layers that shift subtly. Many of his works feature densely worked edges framing largely vacant centers, to keep the focus firmly on the quality of the color and light and on the viewer’s own perception of them. While his works seem to derive from color field painting or contemporary abstraction, Gleason’s inspiration for his approach came from photography. “Being a painter in SoHo, in the late ‘80s, I kept seeing these Cibachrome prints, big shiny photos. I wanted to bring some of that back into painting, to steal it back,” Gleason said. He was especially intrigued by the texture of Polaroid snapshots. “What I liked about the Polaroids was the edges, the way the emulsion got squishy, that melted quality. That’s a big part of where they began, where the edges came into play.” The reflective property of the material play with color and light according to the work’s surroundings and the viewer’s perspective; nuances of texture, color, and tone emerge and shift through that interaction. Gleason’s work is included in the collections of Dakota Studios, New York; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; Hilton Headquarters, McLean, VA; Sun America, Kaufman Broad Home Corporation, Los Angeles, CA; as well as numerous private collections. Jimi Gleason lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Jimi Gleason Air silver deposit and acrylic on canvas 32 x 28 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jimi Gleason Terre silver deposit and acrylic on canvas 32 x 28 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jimi Gleason JG 44 silver deposit and acrylic on canvas 32 x 28 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jimi Gleason JG 46 silver deposit and acrylic on canvas 32 x 28 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jimi Gleason Yellow Gold Reveal silver deposit and acrylic on canvas 72 x 60 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jimi Gleason Aqua Painting silver deposit and acrylic on canvas 84 x 60 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jimi Gleason J Trac acrylic on canvas 72 x 60 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jimi Gleason #8v24 acrylic on canvas 84 x 60 x 1.5 inches 2020
ANDY MOSES
Andy Moses is an artist who lives and works in Venice, California. He was born in Los Angeles in 1962 and attended California Institute of the Arts from 1979 to 1981. At CalArts he focused on performance, film, and painting, studying with Michael Asher, John Baldessari, and Barbara Kruger. In 1981 he moved to New York and worked for the artist Pat Steir. Later that year he developed a type of process painting that is simultaneously abstract and representational. Moses is interested in pushing the physical properties of paint through chemical reactions, viscosity interference, and gravity dispersion to create elaborate compositions that mimic nature and its forces. He was in his first group exhibition at Artists Space in 1986 entitled, Selections. He had his first solo exhibition in New York at Annina Nosei Gallery in 1987. He has continued to exhibit his work in New York, Los Angeles, and abroad over the past twenty-five years. Andy Moses moved back to Los Angeles in 2000 were he continues to refine and expand the vocabulary of his specific painting processes, imagery, and interrelationships with the technical and natural world.
Andy Moses Nocturne 1503 acrylic on canvas, over concave wood panel 54 x 84 x 4.5 inches 2020
Andy Moses Nocturne 1202 acrylic on canvas, over concave wood panel 45 x 75 x 4 inches 2020
Andy Moses Geodynamics 1701 acrylic on canvas, over hexagonal shaped wood panel 78 x 67 x 2.5 inches 2020
Andy Moses Geodynamics 1218 acrylic on canvas, over hexagonal shaped wood panel 60 x 52.25 x 2.25 inches 2020
NELLIE KING SOLOMON
Solomon approaches painting with equal parts irreverence and admiration. In lieu of canvas and brushes Solomon paints on the sharp industrial material of Mylar using custom wood and glass tools for pulling the paint in sweeping, gestural marks. Iconic abstract elements, bold colors, and unusual materials, like asphalt, swirl about, captivating the senses and revealing the tension between spontaneity and rigor at work in her practice. This year debuts her new technique mounting large Mylar works to inch and a half deep aluminum for a crisp architectonic finish. Solomon takes a critical yet playful eye to painting. Trained as an architect, but never licensed, which might explain why she establishes rules, grids, or frameworks, only to challenge their very existence. At the heart of her unique artistic practice lies the confident ability to think and explore beyond the frame. Solomon studied architecture at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City and holds a BA in Art from University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco. She has taught art at Stanford University and California College of the Arts, and worked as an artist assistant to David Ireland, as well as provided architectural restoration on the Palazzo St Polo in Venice. Nellie King Solomon lived in Paris, Venice, Barcelona, and New York City before returning to California.
Nellie King Solomon Spirulina - Hookers Green Rings 1 acrylic, soda ash, and christalina, Mylar mounted to aluminum 96 x 96 x 1.5 inches 2010
Nellie King Solomon S Rings 3. Gold acrylic, soda ash, and christalina on Mylar (unmounted) 96 x 96 inches 2009
Nellie King Solomon Dive In acrylic, ink, soda ash, and christalina, on Mylar (unmounted) 96 x 96 inches 2020
Nellie King Solomon Shrapnel acrylic, soda ash, black glitter, painted paper on Mylar (unmounted) 42 x 84 inches 2015
Nellie King Solomon Make Up Micha Flake, medium, and Mylar mounted on aluminum 14 x 12.5 x 2 inches 2020
Nellie King Solomon Night Vision glass beads, medium, and Mylar mounted on aluminum 14 x 15 x 2 inches 2020
Nellie King Solomon Untitled Silicon Carbide, medium, and Mylar mounted on aluminum 13 x 12.75 x 2 inches 2020
JEREMY THOMAS
For the past seventeen years Thomas has focused on inflating steel objects. In that time, his understanding of this and why he does it has evolved from viewing his process as a metal sculptor, to the exploration of atmosphere and air itself. Air is measured and experienced through pressure and volume. This sets up a climate or prevailing set of conditions. This work is the visual experience of those conditions as applied to geometric constructs consisting of basic concrete geometry, stemming from the shapes found in the building blocks of life. These objects are grown more than fabricated. Each work is specific to the dialogue between maker, material and each moment of inflation. Creating a record of the object’s physical history within each crease, fold and mark. Within the random nature of inflation, is set up a series of relationships between surface, form, structure, color, and process. In our modern society, we are bombarded continuously with color in marketing and imagery to affect our perceptions in our consumer economy. Color is used throughout commercial industry to objectify and manipulate. When these colors are removed from their original commercial contexts and re-appropriated by the individual, we are able to experience them viscerally, outside of these pretexts. This allows for a new experience, or reflection on past experience within the context of our color memory. Each object allows the viewer to explore and evaluate past experience in relation to these abstract objects, attempting to relate them to our current experience and climate.
Jeremy Thomas The Sun Also Rises Yellow stainless steel, vinyl emulsion 23 x 23 x 18 inches 2021
Jeremy Thomas Isolation Blue stainless steel, vinyl emulsion 21 x 22.5 x 8 inches 2021
Jeremy Thomas Phenol Red stainless steel, vinyl emulsion 23.5 x 22.5 x 13 inches 2021
JENNIFER WOLF
Interested in communicating ideas of history, place and nature in her painting practice, Jennifer Wolf utilizes natural dyes and minerals to feature a historically significant palette. For nearly two decades Wolf has nurtured a palette that tells the story of the places she’s been, the labor she has invested, and the curiosity that she has cultivated. Wolf deftly unites natural dyes and hand ground pigments into abstract compositions that capture a unique essence of color. Unabashedly beautiful, Wolf’s paintings explore the elemental nature of color and texture. Wolf keenly controls the flow of her hand-made paints, isolating areas of lacy, textural pattern that overlap spaces of vivid color which blossom across the surface in energetic washes. Wolf’s compositions allude to the natural world in a manner that is both veiled and complex. Henry David Thoreau remarked in 1853 - “I have a room all to myself; it is nature,”- Wolf’s paintings feel like Thoreau’s room, immersive spaces that embrace the viewer in environments that could be under the sea, encased in clouds or inside the faceted walls of a gemstone. Jennifer Wolf is from Ventura, CA. She received her BA in Art History from UCLA and her MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.
Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #1 copper mordant, weld, mineral pigment, osage, logwood on silk on canvas over birch panel 40 x 40 x 1.75 inches 2020
Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #5 indigo, iron mordant, alum mordant, mineral pigment, silk on canvas over birch panel 34 x 34 x 1.75 inches 2020
Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #3 copper mordant, weld, indigo, mineral pigment, silk on canvas over birch panel 48 x 48 x 1.75 inches 2020
Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #7 alum mordant, logwood, cochineal, mineral pigment, silk on canvas over panel 20 x 20 x 1.5 inches 2020
Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #4 alum mordant,indigo, madder root, iron mordant on silk on canvas over birch panel 34 x 34 x 1.75 inches 2020
Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #2 copper and alum mordant, cochineal, madder root, mineral pigment, silk on canvas over birch panel 34 x 34 x 1.75 inches 2020
Jennifer Wolf Dye Painting #6 iron mordant, indigo, fustic wood, silk on canvas over panel 16 x 24 x 1.75 inches 2020
DONALD MARTINY
Donald Martiny has been called a gestural abstractionist. He doesn’t paint on conventional canvases or rectangular compositions; instead he crafts enormous brushstrokes that captures the act of a spontaneous gesture. The results are colorful, sculptural abstractions that ask us to reconsider our notions of painting. In his pursuit to create an intimate and visceral experience, Martiny creates work that lives in the same space as the viewer. He aims to establish a relationship of now. Martiny positions the viewer in the moment, in front of a painting and something uncanny happens. In doing so, he discards the ground (canvas) and allows the brush strokes or gestures themselves to be the painting. He doesn’t use color as a political or symbolic tool. Similarly to Rothko, he sees color as pure energy and feeling. Rothko tried to dissolve the surface of his paintings, while Martiny uses the texture of the surface to fashion a uniquely distinct style. He began by making monochrome works to accentuate the power of the unified whole. Later, he would start mixing colors to assert the value in enhancing the architecture of the brush stroke. In 2015, he received a commission from the Durst Organization to create two monumental paintings that are permanently installed in the lobby of One World Trade Center in New York City. Donald Martiny was born in Schenectady, NY and currently lives and works in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
Donald Martiny Hamatsa polymer and dispersed pigment on aluminum 66 x 77 x 3 inches 2021
Donald Martiny Kolus polymer and dispersed pigment on aluminum 34 x 20 x 2 inches 2021
Donald Martiny Kuma polymer and dispersed pigment on aluminum 70 x 30 x 2.5 inches 2017
Donald Martiny Kwakiutl polymer and dispersed pigment on aluminum 21 x 20 x 2.5 and 13 x 11 x 2 inches 2021