Gary komarin : Blue River Running at Bill Lowe Gallery - www.lowegallery.com

GARY KOMARIN BLUE RIVER RUNNING

GARY KOMARIN INTRODUCTION

Born in New York City, the son of a Czech architect and Viennese writer, Gary Komarin is a risk taker and considered a modern master in post painterly abstraction. Komarin’s stalwart images have an epic quality that grips the viewer with the idea that he or she is looking at a contemporary description of something timeless. For painter Gary Komarin, abstraction has never been a formal dead end. Rather, it has allowed him to challenge the limitations of the style to make painting ‘include more’ precisely because a recognizable image excludes too much. Komarin has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. He recently returned from a solo museum exhibition at the Musee Kiyoharu in Japan. The exhibition and catalog, Moon Flows like a Willow, was orchestrated by the Yoshi Foundation in Tokyo and Paris. Komarin was also invited to show his work at the privately owned Musee Mougins in the South of France where he exhibited Vessel pieces from Twenty Four Vessels at Kit Mandor.

In 1996, Komarin’s work was included in a pivotal exhibition at 41 Greene Street where his work was shown with the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Philip Guston and Bill Traylor. Gary Komarin was invited to show in a catalog exhibition with Robert Motherwell and Sir Anthony Caro in Dublin in 2009. One of the paintings in this exhibition was recently acquired by Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma. And in 2016, Komarin was invited to show with Joan Mitchell and Manuel Neri in Denver.

In 2016, a 60 Minute Producer, Harry Moses, shot, produced and directed a short documentary film on Gary Komarin titled, The Painter’s Path (below). This follows Komarin’s invitation to participate in a film titled, The Chalkboard Chronicles, narrated

by Spalding Grey. He was also included in a recent documentary on American master Clyfford Still, which was aired at the New Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, where Komarin’s work was also acquired for their permanent collection.

Can abstraction avoid becoming “hidebound” in the twenty-first century?

Komarin shows us one way in which it can: he breathes quirky new life into abstraction by making it witty. . . .

He takes what had become closed systems of geometrical and nongeometrical abstractions and interbreeds them. The result is a kind of hybrid abstraction, less heavy-handed than traditional abstraction but still emotionally serious.

It is an overtly hedonistic abstraction, rather than confrontational in the style of the Old Abstract Masters; there is a power in pleasure they, in their Puritanism, could not appreciate. Komarin also has the benefit of aftersight: he orchestrates the whole development of abstraction, bringing its different musical strands together in a sort of grandly ironical musical painting - an ironically symphonic painting not unlike Satie’s witty music.

Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York Psychoanalytic Art Critic

IBIS ISLAND | 2019 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 60 Inches $50,000

“The wonder of Komarin’s paintings is that they resonate with so much poetry, especially since the artist may be trying to fool us into thinking that they were produced without the slightest fuss or guile.”

- D e a n J e n s o n , N e w Yo r k 2 0 0 5

SWIMMING PINK IBIS ISLAND | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 48 Inches $44,000

THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas 72 x 71 Inches $55,000

Komarin’s painting is a reprise of “thin-skinned” color field painting and “thick-skinned” gestural painting, with geometrical odds and ends added by way of the linear drawings. But it is a delicately clever reprise, opening new expressive as well as perceptual territory.

Komarin’s shapes linger on his surface, inviting us to enjoy their paradox: child-like drawings and painterly markings in a witty arrangement. Innocence and sophistication subliminally align in Komarin’s painting.

Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York Psychoanalytic Art Critic

BLUE RIVER RUNNING | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 48 Inches $44,000

At first view, Komarin’s paintings are not easy to digest as there is no single narrative or underlying message, except for the process of painting. But with each examination, the visceral desire for understanding is triggered and one cannot simply walk away.

GOODLY DRAWN IN ORANGE WITH GREY | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 60 Inches $50,000

There is an irksome tension in the peculiarly “introverted” and sketchy shapes, holding their own as they drift on the flat sea.

Its strong underlying current becomes explicit in the meandering lines of A Suite of Blue Sea, a sort of unraveling of the drawn shapes, although the complex of color patches remains intact. The transparency of the drawn shapes and the opaqueness of the color patches makes for another level of formal and expressive tension.

- Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York Psychoanalytic Art Critic

THE VILLA AT LE BOSQUET | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 60 x 48 Inches $38,000

A s abstract painting exper iences its latest resur rection, questions about the natu re of it s reviva l a r i se as wel l. Shunted as ide by the a r t wo r l d as if it we re a dead l ang uage, its renewa l p rom pts the i ro n i c re a l i zat i o n t h at ve r y l i t t l e i n m o d e r n a r t h a s , i n fa ct, b e e n a bs t ra ct. Even Pi ca s so n eve r p rod uced a w h o l l y a bs t ra ct wo r k .

He simply questioned the myr iad ways in which the wor ld could be represented.

The vital it y of abstraction today assu res us that abstract painting can bea r a p rofusion of contem po ra r y na r ratives. Th i s sense of a r t ’s a b i l i t y to e n g a g e t h e p re s e nt h a s e n co u ra g e d a d i ve r s i t y of p ractices, al low ing cultu ral and social issues to coex ist w ith abstract fo r m. Freed from the t y ranny of label s and catego r ies, the conceptual natu re of pai nti ng has reeme rged i n the se r vice of a mu ltitude of voices — f rom a techno - conscious gene ration referencing

unprecedented

modes

of

communication

to

individual s w ishing to inco r po rate al l manner of autobiog raphy a n d i d e n t i t y.

Mason Klein - New York, 2017 -

RUE MADAME IN RED XOCLINA | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 60 Inches $50,000

One can call Komarin’s abstract paintings quirky formalism, if one needs a label, but I think it is better to think of them as a smart synthesis of spontaneous gesture, geometric composition, and iconic form, with a certain tendency to monochrome.

- Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York Psychoanalytic Art Critic

SWIMMING PINK ANTIBES | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas 50 x 50 Inches $30,000

THE ROAD BARE AND WHITE | 2019 Oil, Graphite, Wax, Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 72 x 48 Inches $40,000

INCIDENT AT ECHO LAKE | 2019 Oil, Graphite, Wax, Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 72 x 60 Inches $44,000

LILLY POND IN CREME WITH WHITE | 2019 Oil, Graphite, Wax, Crayon, and Mixed Media on Canvas 72 x 60 Inches $34,000

COUNTRY LINE IN CRÈME AND LIME ( DIPTYCH ) | 2021 |

| Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 96 Inches | $85,000

For painter Gary Komarin, abstraction has never been a formal deadend. Rather, it has allowed him to challenge the limitations of the style, to make painting “include more” precisely because, to quote Komarin’s early mentor, Philip Guston, a recognizable image “excludes too much.” While Komarin is not the type to write a manifesto, he embraces the philosophy that intention is but a small fragment of our consciousness, that painting should be more about experience than a statement of intent. For nearly three decades Komarin has steadily produced a seemingly endless reconfigured vision - saturated and loose color fields punctuated by drips, splotches, and ghostly drawn geometries - indifferent to the ebb and flow of taste. And throughout he has remained quite content to allow each viewer “to bring something different” to his work.

Mason Klein - New York, 2012 -

A SUITE OF BLUE SEA COSTA BRAVA | 2021 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 72 x 60 Inches $48,000

Komarin reminds us that abstraction has its roots in Impressionism, and Impressionism is rooted in the preoccupation with the painterly métier implicit in the Realism of Courbet and Manet. Komarin is a modernist painter, that is, he is acutely aware of his medium and takes a certain “critical” stance to the planar surface, but he is also aware that a m o d ­e r n i s t s u r f a c e t h a t l a c k s a p o e t i c c h a r g e b e c o m e s a s h a l l o w f a c a d e .

- Donald Kuspit, Ph. D., New York Psychoanalytic Art Critic

MAMBO IN BLUE | 2019 - 2020 Oil, Acrylic, Graphite And Mixed Media on Canvas | 80 x 66 Inches $65,000

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