"Yayoi Kusama, Steven Parrino, Anselm Reyle" Exhibition
Gagosian Gallery 24th Street
This event has ended.
Gagosian Gallery presents a grouping of paintings by Yayoi Kusama, Steven Parrino, and Anselm Reyle. Each of these artists, in ways befitting the respective generations and contexts that produced them, explore transcendent tendencies in abstract painting.
Yayoi Kusama (b.1929) established herself in New York in the late 1960s with the mesmerizing Infinity Net paintings - vast canvases enveloped in rhythmic undulations of small, thickly painted loops – which she continues to produce today in her daily studio practice. The inherent philosophical paradox that these paintings embody --that 'infinity' could be quantified and constrained within the arbitrary structure of a readymade canvas —-combined with the more subjective and obsessional implications of their process, broke with the limitations and preconceptions of minimalist abstraction. Kusama moved to New York in the late 1950s where she took an active role in the New York experimental art scene until her return to Japan in 1973. In recent years, her work has been the subject of major museum exhibitions, including LACMA and the Museum of Modern Art (1998); Le Consortium, Dijon (2000); and the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo (2004). A retrospective will open at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in fall 2008.
In his tectonic paintings, Steven Parrino (1958-2005) alluded to a range of contemporary popular influences, from punk music to graphic novels, while reworking the formalist vocabulary of post-war painting. His emphasis on the support itself brought his work closer to the realm of sculpture, with twists, tucks, and folds transforming the canvas into the very subject of the painting. Parrino's numerous references to his interests outside of painting, including his participation in the motorcycle culture, reflect his enduring belief that art can be at once transcendent and in and of its time. A retrospective of Parrino's work took place at Palais de Tokyo, Paris in 2007, as well as a survey of paintings and drawings at Gagosian Gallery, New York.
Also actively engaged with the history of modern formalism, Anselm Reyle (b. 1970) uses a wide range of materials -- paint, mirror, cast surfaces, and reflective foil -- to create actual physical depth in his work. New paintings reflect Reyle's critical attitude that extends to his exploration of the constantly shifting criteria required for a painting to be considered 'complete'. Based in Berlin, Reyle is one of a number of contemporary German painters to examine the legacies of historical abstraction in search of new paradigms. A solo exhibition of his work was organized by the Kunsthalle Zürich in 2006.
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Schedule
from March 13, 2008 to April 19, 2008