Michael Mazur "Rain"

RYAN LEE

poster for Michael Mazur "Rain"

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Mary Ryan Gallery presents Rain, an exhibition of new paintings by Michael Mazur. Mazur has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since he was an MFA student at Yale in the 1960s. For over two decades he has been painting abstractions rooted in his observations of nature, centering on movement, and structured by the layering of color and organic forms.

In his 13th solo exhibition at Mary Ryan Gallery, Mazur combines ideas of surface and subject that have remained consistent throughout his career, but here manifest themselves in their simplest forms: a flat tilted plane, a descending force, and the power and beauty of rain. Mazur found himself intrigued by the energy of falling rain-its intensity, weight, its affect on water (ripples, lakes) as it hits it. Influenced by his continuing series of Pond Edge prints (which combine etching, aquatint, woodcut, and silkscreen), this new body of work is something of a fusion of the lyrical, nuanced abstractions of the 90s and the more perspicuous, painterly works from the Rocks and Water series (early 2000s). Rain in these paintings is the source of energy and organization; a deliberate and dynamic force. Fluidity, always the hall mark of Mazur's work, is especially apparent in these paintings--where surface, structure and content are indivisible.

Two paintings in this exhibition, Rain I and Night Rain, exemplify the range of possibilities that rain offers. In Rain I, the wisps of falling rain disrupt reflections on the gray water's surface. Rain I, the first painting in the series, is quiet and serene. By contrast, Night Rain is much more turbulent, with a heavy, dark surface. A dazzling reflection adds luminosity to the mostly black surface. Mazur says that "all good and great paintings provide a whiff of mortality and, ultimately, are a celebration of the life force; they are both the tunnel and the light at its end...Light and dark, color and its absence, form and anti-form all contribute to this."

Media

Schedule

from April 30, 2009 to June 13, 2009

Opening Reception on 2009-05-02 from 16:00 to 18:00

Artist(s)

Michael Mazur

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