Julian Lethbridge Exhibition

Paula Cooper Gallery "534 W 21 St."

[Image: Julian Lethbridge “Untitled" (2011) oil and pigment stick on linen, 60 x 72 in.]

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Paula Cooper Gallery presents an exhibition of recent work by Julian Lethbridge. The exhibition will be the artist’s first one-person show since 2013.

Informed by the vocabulary of abstract and minimal painting, the works of Julian Lethbridge are defined by an assertive lyricism. Beginning with a grooved grid or gestural base, Lethbridge builds his compositions layer upon layer with seductive, luminous oil paints and pigment sticks. In an additive process that results in complex, textured images, Lethbridge constructs a dynamic interplay between surface, space, light and depth. Though their surfaces are flat in actuality, the paintings’ contrasting pigments and saturation evoke expansive spatial breadth, and abound with recessed crevices and protruding convexity. Lethbridge then incises a structure of undulating or grid-like parallel lines. The pattern maps an expansive and overarching order to his turbulent accumulation of brushwork, a methodical precision that works through, rather than against, the looseness of the artist’s hand.

Born in Sri Lanka in 1947 and brought up primarily in England, Julian Lethbridge received his education at Winchester College and Cambridge University. His first exhibition of paintings and drawings at Julian Pretto Gallery (1988) was followed by one-person exhibitions at Paula Cooper Gallery in New York and Daniel Weinberg Gallery in San Francisco. His work has been widely exhibited throughout the United States and Europe and can be found in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), The Tate Gallery (London), The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), and The National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.). In 1988, Lethbridge was awarded the Francis J. Greenberger Award. He currently lives and works in New York.