NYAB Event - Victor Kord “Cut-Out”

Victor Kord “Cut-Out”

June Kelly Gallery

This event has ended.

I am more an explorer than inventor, says Kord. Discovery plays a crucial role in my process. I find things rather than make them up. I rely on chance to leapfrog the limits of habit of mind. But Kord adds that in these recent paintings he has 兎dged a bit closer to invention.

Kord痴 restless eye spots eclectic shapes and patterns and places them in harmonious relationships like musical chords splayed boldly and rhythmically across the center of his canvases.

In earlier work, Kord made no conscious effort to find shapes to fit into his finite composition. Now, however, the shapes evolve from the conscious process of folding, cutting and unfolding. While color and surface texture continue to play key supporting roles, he gives them less importance than the central concerns of shape-making and placement, says Kord.

Kord readily acknowledges the inspiration provided by the paintings of Henri Matisse and the French master痴 technique of cutouts. 鼎hance happens, Kord says, 殿nd facilitates the courtship of serendipity.

的 sense and feel color rather than think it, he says. 的 consciously attempt to restrict the number of colors in a given palette so that they do not cancel one another but rather create climate and personality.

Kord likens abstract paintings to music and says 的知 just trying to write good tunes.

Kord retired as a professor of painting at Cornell University after a teaching career that spanned more than 40 years. He has shown his paintings extensively throughout the country and internationally since 1967 at such venues as the Kathryn Sermas Gallery, New York; Andr Emmerich Gallery, New York; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, and The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT.

He has received many awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship. His work is represented in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art, The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Madison Art Center of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, among others.