Max Gimblett: The Ballad of the South Pacific

Max Gimblett

The Ballad of the South Pacific Gow Langsford Gallery Auckland 28 November 2012 - January 2013

Max Gimblett The Ballad of the South Pacific

Gow Langsford Gallery Auckland 28 November 2012 - January 2013

The Ballad of the South Pacific, 2012 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Fluorescents, Epoxy, Oil Size, Japanese Pastel Moonbeam Colored Silver Leaf, and Clear Acrylic Overcoat on Canvas 60 x 50 x 2 inches (152 x 127 x 5 cm)

Mythology Matt Jones

Monday through Thursday from eight in the morning until four or five in the late afternoon I spend my hours with Max as I’ve done for the last twelve years. I witness and participate to one degree or another in every step of his practice.

I can break down each moment of a painting and single out the materials and methods employed. Over the years it’s become clear to me that Max’s work arrives from the fingertips of a sorcerer plunging the depths of our collective imagination to pull works of great power, beauty and alchemic mastery.

The monumental works of The Ballad of the South Pacific began as most of Max’s paintings begin. Stretchers are ordered to his specifications from an art supply company in Brooklyn and arrive a week later. Giovanni Forlino and Kris-

ten Reyes, Max’s two studio assistants, stretch number twelve cotton duck over the bars to Max’s desired tightness. Max applies several layers of gesso in a manner similar to his well known all mind / no mind calligraphic work with more brutish muscularity - the task at hand warrants a twist on the familiar finished technique. He starts from the top left and paints across the length of the surface. It takes several rows of this up and down left to right before the canvas is covered. One paints differently when filling space than when exploring it. There is some light sanding of gesso between layers. We sit and discuss ideas of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Figure, human scale in a space, and its relationship to these large canvases. We talk about the body in space relative to the canvas. We talk about the monolith in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Leda and The Swan - In Memoriam - For Cy Twombly seems to exist underwater looking towards the surface. Various Earth and Fire elements participate in an ancient ritual - or perhaps play, courting one another, the marriage of creative forces born in the seas.

The title is inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem Leda, the story is from Greek Mythology (a frequent source for inspiration as is also revealed in The Princess Mnemosyne and Odysseus - After Willem de Kooning). Rubens, Cezanne, and Dali have painted Leda. Twombly, to whom the painting is dedicated, abstracted this story of Zeus seducing Leda, daughter of the Aetolian king Thestius, in the form of a swan, in his painting from 1962. Max pays homage here.

Max’s painting has a fluid sensuality encompassing the tale it tips its hat to with powerful, clear, and direct marks on its oceanic ground.

Nirvana, 2010 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Epoxy, Oil Size, Swiss Gold Leaf, palladium leaf, and Japanese pastel cherry blossom colored silver leaf on Wood Panel 25 x 25 x 2 inches (63.5 x 63.5 x 5cm)

Max locates and pays respect to his artist lineage via his references to those who came before him, the works they’ve made, and his dedication to his painting practice.

Hemmingway is an ancestor in this lineage. Max adores him, reads everything he’s written over and over again, religiously. “Hemmingway is a mentor to me, a hero. Hemmingway is my father.” There’s a relationship between Hemmingway’s short stories and his ability to describe a life, eating, drinking, and human behaviour that formed Max as an artist and I believe updated his interest in the heroic, romantic, and mythological into a modern form specific to Max and his time. Across the River and into the Trees comes from Hemmingway.

Max often starts his paintings, the calligraphic portion, from the top left or right corner and I’ve heard him refer to the “edge” more than a few times as it has great significance for him. He’s an edge painter, brought up on the edge of the South Pacific. The two most important aspects of a painting for him are the centre and the edge. “With a rectangle you have to frame your form, with a quatrefoil it’s a frame in itself,” he says. The rectangles are a return to a shape he hasn’t worked with since 1979 and the last 70 x 90” double bar Sacred Geometry painting. He had gotten it into his head that the rectangle wasn’t a shape anymore. It was generalized. “You had to invent an image to fit the rectilinear space and never knew what distance to travel vertically or horizontally.” I asked him why he’s painting them now, we had a laugh and he then said “when you don’t do something for twenty

In the Beginning was the Word and the Word Became Flesh and Dwelt Among Us, 2011 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Epoxy, Aqua Size, and The Son of Heaven, 2011 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Epoxy, Aqua Size, Swiss Gold Leaf / Canvas 80 x 96 x 2 inches (203 x 244 x 5 cm)

The Son of Heaven, 2011 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Epoxy, Aqua Size, Swiss Gold Leaf / Canvas 80 x 96 x 2 inches (203 x 244 x 5 cm)

to thirty years it’s very refreshing to do it.”

Prior to sending the works from the Bowery to Auckland they live in stacks around the studio waiting to be wrapped. They look like the unbound books of a giant. We talk about how Max’s paintings are partially derived from Illuminated Medieval manuscripts.

These paintings are the colossal pages containing the stories of Max’s mythology.

Knowing what I do about the process of the works, the conversations around them, the references and sources of inspiration I tend to suspend it all and imagine Max up late, fuelled by coffee, paint dripping from his hands dipping his brush into a smouldering cauldron of liquid metal and with a great shout heaving the brush in an intense fluid motion across the glassy surface of a painting, the molten metal cooling in seconds, leaving alchemic waves frozen in time.

Matt Jones New York City November 2012

The Princess Mnemosyne, 2011 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Aqua Size, and Japanese Lavender Colored Silver Leaf on Canvas 96 x 80 x 2 inches (244 x 203 x 5 cm)

across the river and into the trees, 2011 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Epoxy, Aqua Size, Moon Gold Leaf / Canvas 80 x 96 x 2 inches (203 x 244 x 5 cm)

The Scarlet Pimpernel, 2011 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Epoxy, Oil Size, and Japanese Crimson Colored Silver Leaf on Wood Panel 60 x 60 x 2 inches (152 x 152 x 5cm)

Constant, 2012 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Oil Size, and Japanese Blonde Silver Colored Silver Leaf, Japanese Oxidized Black Colored Silver Leaf on Canvas 48 x 40 x 2 inches (123 x 102 x 5 cm)

Diamond Brush Awakened Heart, 2012 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Epoxy, Aqua Size, 12kt White Gold Leaf, and Clear Acrylic Overcoat on Canvas 48 x 40 x 2 inches (123 x 102 x 5 cm)

Flamingo, 2012 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Fluorescents, Epoxy, Oil Size, and Swiss Gold Leaf on Canvas 48 x 40 x 2 inches (123 x 102 x 5 cm)

Odysseus - After Willem de Kooning, 2012 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Aqua Size, and Swiss Gold Leaf on Canvas 48 x 40 x 2 inches (123 x 102 x 5 cm)

First Gesture, 2012 Gesso, Acrylic & Vinyl Polymers, Fluorescents, Epoxy, Aqua Size, Japanese Pastel Gingko Colored Silver Leaf / Canvas 60 x 50 x 2 inches (152 x 127 x 5 cm)

Selected Recent Solo Exhibitions 2012 Gary Snyder Gallery, New York. “Max Gimblett - The Holy Grail” Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland. “Max Gimblett - New Works on Paper” Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown. “Max Gimblett - New York, New York” 2011 Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh. “The Word of God” curated by Eric Shiner Kenyon College, Kenyon, Ohio. “Oxherding - in collaboration with Lewis Hyde” Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland. “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze” (catalog) Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington. “on the shores of infinity” Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown. “Perfect Mirror” 2010 Japan Society, New York. “Oxherding - in collaboration with Lewis Hyde” ICA, Maine College of Art, Portland, ME. “animal speaking - a collaboration with Lewis Hyde” Saatchi & Saatchi, New York. “Graceland” (catalog) Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown. “Pacific Shrine” (catalog) 2009 Haines Gallery, San Francisco. “The Night Sun” Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland. “full fathom five” Page Blackie Gallery, Wellington. “white stone clear water” Selected Recent Group Exhibitions 2012 Dalhousle Art Gallery, Halifax, Nova Scotia. “Unbound: An Exhibition in three chapters,” curated

by Heide Hatry.

The Atlantic Conference, Brooklyn, New York. “The Final Frontier,” organized by Matt Jones.

2011 80 WSE, New York, NY. “80 WSE Presents” curated by Peter Campus, Michael Cohen, Edward Holland, and Hugh O’Rourke.

Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland, New Zealand. “Permanent Collection” Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA. “One Of A Kind - an exhibition of unique artist’s books” curated by Heide Hatry (catalog) Gow Langsford Gallery. “The Green Bicycle” (book launch) Gow Langsford Gallery. “Spring Catalog 2011” (catalog) 2010 The Drawing Center, New York. “Drawing Gifts - 7th Annual Benefit Auction” Center for Book Arts, New York. “Poems & Pictures, A Renaissance in the Art of the Book (1946-1981),” curated by Kyle Schlesinger John Leech Gallery, Auckland. “New Zealand Masters: Cotton, Goldie, Gimblett, Walters, Hotere, Woollaston, Frizzell, Angus and Wero Taroi” Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland. “Spring Catalog Exhibition” QUT Art Museum, Brisbane. “Zen to Kawaii: the Japanese affect” The Suter, Nelson, New Zealand. “West East” 2009 Guggenheim Museum, New York. “The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 18601989,” curated by Alexandra Munroe (January 30-April 19) Nadene Milne Gallery, Arrowtown. “The New Zealand Room”

Selected Collections Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia Auckland Art Gallery, Toi O Tamaki, Auckland Christchurch Art Gallery, Christchurch, New Zealand The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art & the Humanities, Los Angeles, California Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Harris Collection, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island Kansai Gaidai University, Osaka, Japan Karl Ernst Ostahaus-Museum der Stradt Hagen, Hagen, Germany Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia Museum of Modern Art, New York Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Oeffentliche Kunstsammlung, Basel, Switzerland. Dieter Koepplin Donation, d1999 Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California Waikato Art Museum, Te Whare Taonga O Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Max Gimblett was born in Auckland in 1935, attended Grafton Primary, King’s Prep, and Auckland Boys Grammar School. He was a potter’s apprentice then a studio potter in Toronto. He studied painting at the San Francisco Art institute. He continues his studies at the New York Jung Foundation. Gimblett was Visiting Associate Professor of Art and Design, Pratt Institute (Brooklyn) in the 1980s. He is the Inaugural Visiting Professor of Art to the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries, Auckland University.

Gimblett has traveled to India, Burma, Cambodia, Vietnam, Japan, Mexico, and all over Europe. He leads sumi ink workshops across the globe.

He’s been the focus of solo museum exhibitions at The Auckland Art Gallery (Max Gimblett - The Brush of All Things, 2004), the Queensland Art Gallery (Max Gimblett - The Language of drawing, 2002), and the Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburg (Max Gimblett - The Word of God, 2011) and Japan Society (Oxherding with Lewis Hyde, 2010-11). His work has been included in several landmark group exhibitions including Gow Langsford Gallery’s MGM - McCahon, Gimblett, Motherwell (2005), and The Guggenheim’s The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia - 1860-1989 (2009) (curated by Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator of Asian Art).

Gimblett has returned to New Zealand each year since 1977 to exhibit and teach.

His work can be found in the collection of many of the world’s museums including The Museum of Modern Art, The Guggenheim Museum, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Getty Research Institute for the History of Art & the Humanities, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Karl Ernst Ostahaus-Museum der Stradt Hagen (Germany), The Schyls Collection (Malmö Konsthall, Sweden)The Auckland Art Gallery, The Christchurch Art Gallery, and The Museum of New Zealand.

Living and working in New York and Auckland, Max Gimblett investigates the purity of material and form in his work, focusing primarily on canvas, paper from all countries, and wood panels with gold leaf gilding, polyurethane, epoxy resin, and acrylic paint, Max’s Pacific Rim ideology is apparent in his strong yet subtle works. Intrinsic to Gimblett’s practice is the influence of Asian art, particularly ink painting and calligraphy.

Gimblett works with the quatrefoil shape, the square, the rectangle, and the circle.

He makes unique artist books with poets and is published in many limited editions of artists’ books.

Matt Jones (born 1980, Rochester, New York) is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Jones received his BFA from The Cooper Union, was awarded the Vera T. Carroll Prize for Painting, and attended the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Painting.

Jones works between a variety of inter-related genres that explore astronomy, theoretical physics, ancient history, and comedy – all developed and inspired by research and personal experience. Together his bodies of work form a way for Jones to interact with, evaluate, negotiate, and play with the world around him.

Jones has exhibited at a number of prominent galleries and institutions including the Morris Museum, Mass MoCA, NADA Art Fair, The Hole, Freight and Volume, and Anonymous Gallery. He has exhibited artworks alongside other leading contemporary artists including, Ross Bleckner, Sam Moyer, John Newsom, Mark Gibson, Katherine Bernhardt, Wendy White, and has collaborated and exhibited regularly with friend and artist Kadar Brock.

Jones work has been reviewed in Purple Diary, I-D, and NY Arts Magazine, Art Net, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Paper Magazine to name a few. Jones continues to work with The Hole (New York) and Anonymous Gallery (Mexico City).

Jones has worked for Max Gimblett starting as an Intern in 2001, was promoted to Studio Assistant after his internship ended, then Database Manager, and is currently Gimblett’s Studio Manager.

Max Gimblett www.maxgimblett.com Gow Langsford Gallery 26 Lorne Street PO Box 5461 Auckland 1010, New Zealand T: + 64 9 303 4290 F: + 64 9 303 4302 info@gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz www.gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz Matt Jones www.mattjonesrules.com The Atlantic Conference Press www.theatlanticconferencepress.com Publshed by Gow Langsford Gallery and The Atlantic Conference Press Copyright 2012 respected parties