Leonard Contino "Abstract Visions"

CUE Art Foundation

poster for Leonard Contino "Abstract Visions"

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Leonard Contino is a hard-edged geometric abstract painter who has been making art for over 40 years. In addition to painting, Contino's works include sculpture, wall reliefs and collages. His paintings are in a number of museums and private collections including the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Foundation of Contemporary Art, Geneva. Contino's work, which has been described as precisionist and "visionary"(1), represents a relentless exploration of pictorial space using dynamic geometric forms.

In his paintings, Contino's uses three motifs: biomorphic shapes, tessellated patterns of interlocking squares and rectangles, as well as transparent and solid color triangles, which Contino calls "floaters." In these paintings, Contino builds up thin layers of acrylic paint to create subtly shimmering surfaces. The paintings appear to glow and emanate light. At the center of the canvas, he places hard-edged densely colored solid triangular shapes. These geometric shapes and forms, encased in soft aureoles of light, appear to be weightless and suspended in space, creating a complex pictorial illusionism. However, for Contino, it's not so much to fool the eye as in trompe l'oeil or Op art but to engage the viewer by creating a painting that he says "is like a field of energy. "

Within this flexible geometry, the spatial ambiguities occur over time creating a continually shifting pictorial plane. For Contino, these paintings are "made up of simple elements that are constantly changing. " This constantly changing pictorial space is a hallmark of Contino's art, something that he has persistently pursued for over 40 years. And over that time, Contino has created a body of work that is lively, rigorous and represents a compelling artistic vision.

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Schedule

from February 02, 2013 to March 09, 2013

Opening Reception on 2013-02-02 from 14:00 to 16:00

Artist(s)

Leonard Contino

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