NYAB Event - "Colors for a New Home, Signs of Love and Other Paintings" Exhibition

"Colors for a New Home, Signs of Love and Other Paintings" Exhibition

Alexander and Bonin

This event has ended.

Alexander and Bonin presents paintings by eight artists. Dating from 1974 to the present, the paintings share themes of landscape, water, seasons, and time.

Matthew Benedict’s The Monster (2003) depicts a sea serpent in the midst of an idyllic New England harbor. Benedict has often explored historical, literary and folkloric information related to the sea. This large gouache on wood painting was exhibited in Benedict’s solo exhibition at the Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Kunsthalle Barmen in 2008.

Robert Bordo’s compositions are frequently based on existing 2-dimensional objects such as maps, postcards and newspapers. His Perfect Lawn (1994) is a conceptual aerial diagram of the subject and a good example of the humor which underlies much of his work.

Michael Buthe (1944 – 1994) is known for working in a wide array of materials and is considered to be one of the innovators of room-sized installations, including the 1972 Homage to the Sun shown at Documenta V. Beginning in 1970, Buthe spent an increasing amount of time in North Africa and the Middle East, an influence evident in the patterning of the central panel of Die Insel (1989).

In Colors for a new home (2009) by Diango Hernández, pools of paint suggesting color swatches hold scraps of paper depicting details of a modernist home. The painting’s white canvas ground suggests the promise of a freshly painted wall, a beginning, or a platform for ideas and thought.

The subject of Stefan Kürten’s paintings are homes and gardens as sites of fulfillment. The desire to live in the perfect home and to be forever happy is often at the root of his image selection. This exhibition will include Fine Wrinkles (2000), whose shadow cast lawn feels both cooling and threatening—accented by a depiction of white outdoor seating that is rendered both ghostly and inviting.

Ree Morton’s Signs of Love (1976) is one of several elements related to a large installation of the same name (Collection Whitney Museum of American Art). Other panels from this installation isolate a single evocative word (atmospheres, gestures, moments, objects, pleasures, poses, settings, signs) against an array of monochrome grounds.

For more than twenty years, the focus of Sylvia Plimack Mangold’s work has been the trees surrounding her studio in Washingtonville, New York. In the past five years, a maple tree adjacent to her studio has been her sole motif. Her approach to the trees is much like her earlier floor, tape and mirror paintings in its insistent visualization of real world elements that transcend subject matter as painted surfaces and existentialist records. Summer Maple Detail (2010) exemplifies the present state of this investigation.

In the 1970s Paul Thek (1933-1988) lived and worked in several European countries, regularly spending time on the Island of Ponza. The exhibition includes two Untitled paintings (1974) created there. Thek’s work is the subject of Diver: A Retrospective organized by the Whitney Museum of Art and the Carnegie Museum of Art. The exhibition is currently on view at the Hammer Musuem, Los Angeles.