TONDO by Bentley Gallery

TONDO LOUISE BLYTON ANDY MOSES DEVORAH SPERBER JAN MAARTEN VOSKUIL JIM WAID Bentley Gallery Exhibition February 18, 2022 - April 9, 2022 BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

Breaking the convention of the rectangular canvas, this collection of contemporary abstract work is presented exclusively in the round. A traditional renaissance form, the tondo—a circular work of art—gained popularity in 15th century Italy when rounded architectural features were en vogue. Bringing this centuries-old practice into the present day with their own unique flair, the artists of “TONDO” reflect a large diversity of styles, mediums, and aesthetics. From hard-edge matte paintings to those of poured metallics, from spools of thread to shaped linen, this exhibition showcases a wide range of talented artists willing to break an almost cardinal rule of contemporary painting, proving also that history can indeed come full circle.

Images courtesy of the artists and John Dowd at Clutch Photos BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

LOUISE BLYTON

Louise Blyton is a reductive artist exploring the romance of raw linen and dry pigment. The artist’s geometrically shaped canvases explore color, light, and form through the visual language of Reductivism, an aesthetic style characterized by streamlined compositions, restricted color, and a reduction of form and means. To construct her works, Blyton covers custom built balsa wood stretchers with raw linen, adorning them with layers of pure pigment or acrylic paint. Each pigment reacts differently to raw linen and requires a specific number of coats to reach the artist’s desired level of saturation. As the artist explains, “I’m always looking for a kind of quietness and harmony when making my works even if the color being used is loud.” Blyton lives and works in Melbourne, Australia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art at RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia in 1988. Her works are held in significant corporate and private collections in Australia, China, France, United Kingdom, Portugal, and the United States. Since 2000, Blyton has run an artist supply store called, St. Luke Artist Colourman, which specializes in professional paint and raw materials, with her husband David Coles.

Louise Blyton The Skies of the Sky #2 (blue) acrylic on linen over panel 35.5 x 35.5 x 1 inches 2022

Louise Blyton The Skies of the Sky #3 (white) acrylic on linen over panel 35.5 x 35.5 x 1 inches 2022

Louise Blyton The Skies of the Sky #1 (black) acrylic on linen over panel 35.5 x 35.5 x 1 inches 2022

Images courtesy of the artists and John Dowd at Clutch Photos BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

Louise Blyton Life on the Shelf acrylic on line 11.75 x 11.75 x 5 inches 2021

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 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. He moved back to Los Angeles in 2000 where he continues to refine and expand the vocabulary of his specific painting processes, imagery, and relationships with the technical and natural world.

Andy Moses Geodesy 903 acrylic on canvas over circular wood panel 42 x 42 x 2 inches 2022

Images courtesy of the artists and John Dowd at Clutch Photos BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

Andy Moses Geodesy 1502 acrylic on canvas over circular wood panel 72 x 72 x 2 inches 2018

Andy Moses Geodesy 716 acrylic on canvas over circular wood panel 36 x 36 x 2 inches 2021

Andy Moses Geodesy 1509 acrylic on canvas over circular wood panel 72 x 72 x 2 inches 2020

Andy Moses Geodesy 1219 acrylic on canvas over circular wood panel 60 x 60 x 2 inches 2019

DEVORAH SPERBER

Using up to thousands of spools of thread and an optical glass, installation artist Devorah Sperber cleverly combines science and art to create optical illusions of classic paintings. Sperber begins the recreation process by taking digital images of each work and matching spools of thread for the pixel colors. The inverted pieces are suspended from the ceiling, and from a distance, a vague suggestion of an Old Master painting emerges. It is only through the crystal-ball like orb that one can see the intended vision in sharp clarity. Of her process, Sperber explains, “I started to use optical devices by chance. I was creating my first thread spool work in a very small studio. I couldn’t see it in its entirety even from the hall. There were binoculars lying around and I flipped them around, using them the wrong way, to see the whole thing. When I did that, the abstract thread spools changed into a realist image again.” These installations have garnered much admiration and attention as the interactive involvement fosters a playfulness not often associated with masterworks.

Images courtesy of the artists and John Dowd at Clutch Photos BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

Devorah Sperber After Picasso 5024 spools of thread, stainless steel ball chain and hanging apparatus, clear acrylic sphere, steel stand 96 x 100 x 60 inches 2006

Devorah Sperber After Holbein 1 chenille stems, mixed medium platform, polished stainless steel cylinder 31 x 76 x 76 inches 2003-2004 40

JAN MAARTEN VOSKUIL

Jan Maarten Voskuil stretches his paintings into the third dimension. His crafted, partly curved wooden constructions are based on simple geometric principles: the circle, the square, and the rectangle. He stretches the frames with linen and usually paints them in monochrome colors. With a minimum of means, he manages to develop a broad spectrum with his work whereby he partly stands in the tradition of the constructive, minimal, and concrete art of the twentieth century. His work is labeled as spatial object, sculpture, autonomous design or even architecture. He himself consistently continues to call the work painting because his frame of reference is painting. Spatial or not, “It remains paint on canvas, and deals with the limitations of the flat surface,” he argues. “Conversely, you would call Carl Andre’s work sculpture even though it’s mostly flat, wouldn’t you?” Still, there is something to be said for seeing in Voskuil not just a painter. Over the years, his ingenious stretchers have become primarily modular constructions, which can sometimes be assembled in various ways. This makes him not only a painter but also a “builder” of paintings, which brings him very close to architecture. In his latest series of works the exploration of space is accompanied by the (re)introduction of emptiness into the painting. The modules are no longer connected to each other. Although this disintegration already made its appearance in the series Dynamic Monochromes, from 2012 onwards, in the form of indentations between the modules, this in-between space is now much more thematized.

Jan Maarten Voskuil Pointing Out As Blue Grey acrylic on linen 12 x 12.5 x 6 inches 2019

Jan Maarten Voskuil Pointing Out As Green Grey acrylic on linen 12 x 13 x 7.75 inches 2019

Jan Maarten Voskuil Pointing Out As Yellow Grey acrylic on linen 12 x 12 x 5.5 inches 2019

Images courtesy of the artists and John Dowd at Clutch Photos BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

JIM WAID

Jim Waid creates abstract worlds saturated with color, layered with mark, filled with rhythm and movement, and intricately textured. His canvases barely contain the landscape painted upon them; lush with growth they invite the viewer to explore the space. The artist said of his work, “I don’t want the paintings to be like you’re looking at a landscape. I want them to feel like you’re in it.” Initially the paintings seem nonrepresentational, however, they slowly reveal themselves to be made up of organic textures, abstracted natural forms, and the desert landscape. They convey a sense of nature, without the specificity of traditional landscape painting. He is considered one of Arizona’s most celebrated painters and is included in the public collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Denver Art Museum; Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, NM; Palm Springs Desert Museum; Tucson Museum of Art; Phoenix Art Museum; Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; Arizona State University Art Museum; Indiana University Art Museum in Bloomington, as well as numerous other museums and corporations. Jim Waid currently lives and works in Tucson, Arizona.

Images courtesy of the artists and John Dowd at Clutch Photos BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com

Jim Waid Skep acrylic on canvas 64 x 64 x 2 inches 2000

Jim Waid Blue Rondo acrylic on canvas 77 x 77 x 2 inches 2001

Jim Waid Lark’s Tondo acrylic on canvas 72 x 72 x 2 inches 2016

Jim Waid Peacock acrylic on canvas 72 x 72 x 2 inches 2022

Images courtesy of the artists and John Dowd at Clutch Photos BENTLEY GALLERY | 215 East Grant Street, Phoenix, AZ 85004 | 480-946-6060 | www.bentleygallery.com