Jim Watt
Jim Watt 20 WATTS Red Yellow Blue
Jim Watt is an American artist and architect based in New Jersey. Watt’s paintings and drawings are an exploration of space, form, and material, a context that binds his work as a practicing architect. At Princeton University, where Watt earned his M.A. in Architecture, teachers Michael Graves and Enrique Miralles espoused the Renaissance notion that architects must paint, draw, and sculpt to fully realize their ideas. Form, space, material, texture, color, and light are shared languages that transcend medium. When I first discovered Watt’s paintings, they were imaginary abstract landscapes inhabited by vibrantly colored trees, houses, bicycles, chairs, buildings and smokestacks. It was as if Matisse, Hans Hoffman, Richard Diebenkorn and Giorgio de Chircio had conspired together to create a new language. Soon, however, Watt began to move towards pure abstraction. The passion with which Jim takes in art, architecture, music and life is manifest in his work. I experienced this personally when Jim, as producer, collaborated with me on the play Red, about Mark Rothko, in his home town of Asbury Park, NJ. Curator, Laura G. Einstein, recently reflected on Watt’s work: Jazz music is foundational to the cadences of Watt’s paintings. This is how he thinks of his works, as harmonious and dissonant as the case may be. His works of art are explorations of color, form, material and light, all interacting with each other in a fluid and fractured musical sequence. His works, together, form a series of improvisations. As with his architectural works, Watt joins his painted surfaces with a bent toward light, atmosphere, tone, angle, horizontality and structure that is grounded in a firm substrate. The totality of the parts creates a unified composition that becomes part color study, part musical improvisation, and a work rooted in architecture.
Jim Kempner New York City September 2020 501 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011
(212) 206-6872
info@jimkempner.com www.jimkempnerfineart.com
Yellow 1, 2020. Oil on canvas. 60 x 70�.
Yellow 2, 2020. Oil on canvas. 30 x 24””.
Red 1, 2020. Oil on canvas. 24 x 18�.
A New Day, 2020. Oil on canvas. 24 x 36”.
Blue 1, 2020. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30”.
Blue on Yellow, 2020. Oil on canvas. 72 x 48�.
Theme and Variation IX, 2020. Oil on canvas. 36 x 48�.
Theme and Variation X, 2020. Oil on canvas. 24 x 36�.
Blue 2, 2020. Oil on canvas. 40 x 30”.
Blue 3, 2020. Oil on canvas. 24 x 18”.
Yellow 4, 2020. Oil on canvas. 48 x 72�.
Red 5, 2020. Oil on canvas. 72 x 48�.
Blue 4, 2020. Oil on canvas. 24 x 18”.
Red 7, 2020. Oil on canvas. 24 x 18�.
Blue 5, 2020. Oil on canvas. 36 x 24”.
Red 6, 2020. Oil on canvas. 24 x 18�.
Red 2, 2020. Oil on canvas. 12 x 9�.
Red 4, 2020. Oil on canvas. 12 x 9�.
Red 3, 2020. Oil on canvas. 12 x 9�.
Yellow 4, 2020. Oil on canvas. 36 x 48�.
JIM KEMPNER FINE ART Jim Kempner Fine Art specializes in contemporary paintings, sculpture, photography, and works on paper, with a special emphasis on contemporary master prints and outdoor sculpture. Our inventory appeals to the established as well as beginning collector. We work closely with art advisors, designers, corporations and museums to expand and enrich their varied collections. Located in the heart of Chelsea, the gallery’s three story modernist-inspired structure designed by architects Smith & Thompson boasts one of the few outdoor sculpture gardens in New York City, and is included in a number of books about contemporary architecture. Our inventory includes work by Donald Baechler, John Baldessari, Louise Bourgeois, Christo, Chuck Close, Richard Diebenkorn, Jim Dine, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Spencer Finch, Jane Hammond, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, Jasper Johns, Deborah Kass, Alex Katz, Ellsworth Kelly, William Kentridge, Jeff Koons, Robert Mangold, Robert Motherwell (Jim Kempner Fine Art represents the Dedalus Foundation, Robert Motherwell’s print archive, in New York), Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Longo, Elizabeth Peyton, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Paula Scher, Sean Scully, Frank Stella, Donald Sultan, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol and others. Among the contemporary artists whose work we represent are Robert Attanasio, Christopher Beane, Long-Bin Chen, Jeff Chyatte, Lin Emery, Rinaldo Frattolillo, Carole Freeman, Gianfranco Gorgoni, John Henry, Charlie Hewitt, Jay Kelly, Manuel Knapp, Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, Jerry Mischak, David Mitchell, Jacob Ouillette, Greg Parker, Robert Petersen, Jenna Pirello, Randy Regier, Paula Scher, Henry Schiowitz, Tom Slaughter, Pal Svensson, Boaz Vaadia, Bernar Venet, and Jim Watt. Jim Kempner Fine Art at its present location in the fall of 1997. Jim Kempner has published prints by Rinaldo Frattolillo, Charlie Hewitt, Robert Indiana, Paula Scher, Bernar Venet, in addition to Gianfranco Gorgoni’s photographs of Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Other publications include Ligorano/Reese’s Line Up portfolio, Untitled 2001 silkscreen, and the DEMOCRACY lightbox, made in collaboration with former gallery director Dru Arstark, under the name Madness of Art Editions. Jim has also published a number of his own prints, beginning with Apocryphal Now, in 2014.
501 West 23rd Street New York, NY 10011
(212) 206-6872
info@jimkempner.com www.jimkempnerfineart.com