Artistry and Alchemical Process

ARTISTRY AND ALCHEMICAL PROCESS

info@spaniermanmodern.com

212-249-0619

Artistry and Alchemical Process

On display from October 5 - November 11, 2023

Art should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination, and encourages people to go further.”

—Dan Christensen

In the act of creation there are no straight lines, no easy answers, rather there is a process of foraging, a journey of trial and error, informed by years of experience. It takes courage to deviate from the linear path, to venture into unfamiliar territory, to experiment, pose new questions and create new obstacles, and then seek to resolve them - or not. Though we may live in a technologically dominated world, the practice of being an artisan, the use of hands, and the cherishing of craft, is still key. NFTs, AI, and 3D printing, all seek to supplant the practice of being an artisan as irrelevant.

All of the artists in this exhibition take singular pleasure in the investigation of materials and their application. Charles Alston’s use of ochre in “Abstract #3” gives a warm and earthy grit to the dynamic angularity of his gestures. Sam Middleton conceals found printed material in “The Search”, so that the signage is rendered mute and abstract, lending only texture and the suggestion of content to the surface of the painting. The artist Dan Christensen explored a variety of unconventional techniques for paint application throughout his career, including the use of ‘blasters, rollers, squeegees, industrial brushes, brooms, and weedsprayers’ one former gallerist lists. In the vertical painting “Cancun”, a white orb appears to roll away on a nearly figurative ground, like a ball on a pool table, then a floating block of color, peachy-burnt orange layered over white, flattens out the picture plane, and a series of his sprayed signature loops energetically crown the top half in radiating white that takes on a neon tinge atop the purplish-black background. The result feels like a punk rock remix of an Adolph Gottlieb.

Other artists included use materials that diffuse light and increase the depth of pigment, or use layering techniques to create surfaces alternately tactile or atmospheric or luminescent. There is an element of transformation latent in the finished objects of art.

“I search for ways of combining and activating color, material, and surface to create distinct visual events that exist in the potency of their own presence, that call attention to the present moment. This endeavor is endlessly difficult and engaging, and requires an inclusive empathy that, for me, is humanity at its most poetic.”Steven Alexander

For more information, contact Kathryn Kearney: kathryn.kearney@spaniermanmodern.com

STEVEN ALEXANDER

Steven Alexander is an American artist who makes abstract paintings characterized by luminous color, sensuous surfaces, and iconic configurations. His works are composed as sensate visual events that embody potential states of being. They present uncomplicated color situations that mirror the viewer, alluding to rhythms, tensions, and dualities of the body and psyche, inviting meditative encounters.

Born in 1953 in west Texas, Alexander spent his early years observing the vast skies and flat expanses of the southwest plains. He moved to New York in 1975, completing an MFA in painting at Columbia University, where he studied with Richard Pousette-Dart and Dore Ashton. An elected member of the venerable American Abstract Artists group, Alexander has been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Belin Foundation, a studio residency at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, and many public commissions. He has been Artist-in-Residence at Studio Art Centers International in Florence, Italy, Visiting Artist at Bowdoin College and Parsons School for Design, and was Professor of Visual Arts at Marywood University.

Alexander's work has been featured most recently in one-person shows at Spanierman Modern and David Findlay Gallery in New York, as well as in more than 100 group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad. He maintains a home and studio in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania.

Steven Alexander, Reflector 18, 2021, Oil and acrylic on linen, 70 x 62 in.

CHARLES ALSTON

An active figure in the Harlem Renaissance, Charles Alston created vital representations of black experiences and figures during the middle of the 20th century with his paintings, sculptures, and illustrations. Alston served in the Works Progress Administration during the Depression and the Office of War Information during the Second World War, and his early work demonstrates affinities for realism in his sympathetic portraits and large-scale public murals. In the 1940s, his work turned toward Cubism and began to exhibit sharper lines and mask-like characteristics, while the Civil Rights era fueled a more critical tone in his work, imbuing religious allusions with a sense of political immediacy. Throughout his life, Alston remained active alongside fellow Harlem Renaissance artists Hale Woodruff and Romare Bearden—his relative by marriage —and served as an important influence to Jacob Lawrence.

Charles Alston, Abstract #3, 1960, Oil on canvas, 28 x 50 in.

NATHAN BRUJIS

Nathan Brujis has developed a visual languagethat mirrors the expressive power of the subconscious and the spiritual. Starting from simple geometric forms and gestural brushstrokes arranged in layers, Mr. Brujis' voyage solidifies into a multidimensional discovery of opposing forces, an embodiment of the universal fabric as seen through the eyes of the artist. His works abandon direct representation of recognizable objects in favor of abstract forces, an expressive lyrical experience of instant reaction with subconscious images. Some works find themselves quickly, while take months to make.

Nathan Brujis was born in Lima, Peru, in 1971. He studied art and philosophy at Brandeis University and graduated from the American University of Washington DC with a master's degree. He has been awarded important art prizes such as the Deborah Josepha Cohen Memorial Award for Excellence in Painting in 1992, the New York Studio School Faculty Award in 1994, il Premio per la Pittura Lorenzo il Magnifico at the Florence Biennale d'Arte Contemporanea in 2001 and 2003. He has exhibited extensively in New York, Lima, Peru, and Italy. He currently lives and works in New York.

Nathan Brujis, Raw Energy, 2022, Oil on Linen, 40 x 40 in.

DAN CHRISTENSEN

Among America's leading abstract artists, Dan Christensen devoted over forty years to exploring the limits, range, and possibilities of paint and pictorial form. Although his art belongs within the category defined by the influential art critic Clement Greenberg as Color Field or Post-Painterly Abstraction, he both carried on the legacy of this approach while stepping outside of it, drawing from a wide variety of Modernist sources, using many idiosyncratic techniques, and employing methods more commonly associated with the action painting techniques of Abstract Expressionism. The result is a distinctive body of artwork that is original, surprising, and filled with joy, exuberance, and pleasure in the act of painting.

Born in Cozad, Nebraska, in 1942, the son of a farmer and truck driver, Dan Christensen chose to become an artist when, as a teenager, he saw the work of Jackson Pollock on a trip to Denver. After receiving his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, 1964, he moved to New York City. His "spray loop" paintings, produced using a spray paint gun, were a fascinating embodiment of the reductive abstract tendencies in 1960s American art and of the interest of the time in innovative applications of new techniques. With their powerful ribbon-like configurations and shimmering allover surface effects, these works won the attention of Greenberg, who became an enthusiastic supporter of Christensen's art. Dan Christensen had his first solo exhibition in New York in 1967. Two years later, he was given his first one-person show at the Andre Emmerich Gallery, joining this important showcase for color-field painting, where works by artists such as Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, and Helen Frankenthaler were also shown. Christensen soon started to be invited to participate in major museum shows, including the Whitney Annuals in New York and the Corcoran Gallery’s Biennials in Washington, D.C. From the 1970s until he died, Dan Christensen was unrelenting in his exploration of new techniques as well as in his return in new ways to treat forms that had held his attention in the past. Dan Christensen lived as an artist in East Hampton until his death in 2007.

Dan Christensen, Cancun, 2000, Acrylic on canvas, 94 x 43 in.

ELAINE DE KOONING

Though she was closely associated with the New York school of Abstract Expressionism, Elaine de Kooning embraced a painting practice that ranged from gestural abstraction to portraiture. The artist painted emotional landscape scenes, mythological subjects, and cultural icons such as John F. Kennedy. She often took inspiration from cave paintings. De Kooning studied at Hunter College, the Leonardo da Vinci Art School, and the American Artists School. She became involved with an avant-garde circle of artists that included her future husband, artist Willem de Kooning. Her work has been featured in shows at the Walker Art Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, and is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.

Elaine De Kooning, An Opening at Egan Gallery (A Portrait of Betsy Egan), 1948-1952, Oil on board, 13-3/4 x 16-3/4 in.

RAPHAËLLE GOETHALS

Raphaëlle Goethals has used wax and resin as her signature medium for the past fifteen years. Probing the physicality of the materials, Goethals works in a process of layering, pouring, scraping off, effacing, leaving traces of earlier information.

Goethals’ preoccupation with space, depth, and the fundamentality of light testifies to her continuing interest in the history of painting and the point at which language originates. Her surfaces refer to a Jungian space, a semiotic world, an uncoded, unarticulated space of interpretation. At the intersection of the intuitive and the decisive, these paintings celebrate uncertainty and flux. As a verbal and cultural superimposition, the discreet presence of the grid anchors us in present time. An unapologetic nod to modernismand the vocabulary of painting, it coexists here with sublimely luminous surfaces. While gestural, Goethals’ work likewise displays restraint. The patient eye will discover discreet references to art historical antecedents whispering from behind her painted veils.

The complexity of materials, the seductively patient layering of material is extravagant, yet takes us to the essence, stripped away of any distractions and aiming for a clarity of thought. Constantly bombarded with information, we are increasingly accustomed to simultaneity of experience. These paintings, with their distilled, vulnerable, and subtle surfaces remind us to stop and pay attention. Luring the viewer into a space of contemplation, the current body of work attempts to bridge the personal and universal, the expressive and the minimal. We are exposed to the vulnerability of present times. Ultimately, the paintings are massively silent.

Raphaëlle Goethals, Dust Stories (Chuska), 2023, Encaustic on panel, 40 x 42 in.

TEO GONZALEZ

Teo Gonzalez was born in Quinto, a small town in Zaragoza, Spain, in 1964. Teo had always been drawn to photography, design, and whatever other two-dimensional types of artistic expression there might be, but it was not until he was twenty years old that it became evident to him that he was a painter. At the end of 1990, he developed his signature style -- works consisting of thousands of drops of water arranged into a grid pattern, inside which a small amount of ink or enamel was dropped and left to dry.

He moved to Southern California the following year. Within a month, he produced 3036 Gotas de Tinta his first piece to ever enter a museum's permanent collection, when it was acquired by New York's Museum of Modern Art. He had his first show in San Francisco in 1996. He currently works and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Although the use of the pictorial field and exploration of color in his work draws comparisons to Abstract Expressionists such as Rothko and Pollock, his grids and working process recall Minimalists such as Agnes Martin and Sol Lewitt.

For more than twenty-five years, he has relied on the grid to serve as the foundation for his work, building layers of carefully plotted cells. The result is a topography of undulating patterns and glistening surfaces.

Teo Gonzalez, Double Plain Painting, 2017, Acrylic on canvas over board, 36 x 36 in.

FELRATH HINES

Born in 1913, Felrath Hines’s figurative and cubist-style artwork morphed into soft-edged organic abstractions as he grappled with hues in his chosen oil medium. The New York art world was small when he arrived in the early 1960s, especially for African American artists, who were routinely marginalized by prestigious galleries and museums.

Hines’s fellow artist Romare Bearden invited him to become a founding member of Spiral, a group of African American visual artists who initially met in response to the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Several Spiral members attended the March on Washington and mounted their first and only group exhibition at their Christopher Street studio in 1965. Unconvinced that there existed styles or subjects that could be categorized as exclusively “black art,” Hines continued to pursue his abstract sensibility. His social life, including jazz clubs and art openings, led Hines to the 28th Street apartment of acquaintance Frank Neal, where such luminaries as James Baldwin, Harry Belafonte, Charles Sebree, and Billy Strayhorn gathered and discussed creative and social issues, as well as their careers and place in the dominant white world. Hines also became known for his impeccable conservation work. His client list included the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, and Miss Georgia O’Keeffe, who also became a loyal friend.

In 1972 he left NYC for Washington DC to become Chief Conservator for the Smithsonian and, later, the Hirshhorn, a job he retired from in 1984. From that time to his death in 1993, he produced more paintings than during the rest of his career combined.

Felrath Hines, Landscape, 1965, Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 in.

LINDA LYNCH

Linda Lynch lives and works in New Mexico. She is a native of far west Texas and from a ranching family long established in the solitude of the high Chihuahuan desert, a landscape that has informed her work for over three decades. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing and printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute and spent many years subsequently in New York City and Africa. She founded two nonprofit organizations - one dedicated to environmental conservation in west Texas and another for teaching literacy through visual art in under-served elementary schools near her studio in New Mexico.

With an extensive history of group exhibitions in the United States, she has also had solo exhibitions in cities as diverse as El Paso, Texas, Chihuahua City, Mexico, and Johannesburg, South Africa. Her work can be found in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Brooklyn Museum, Harvard University Art Museums, Yale University Art Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the University of California at Los Angeles Hammer Museum, and the Menil Collection, Houston, among others. While based in New Mexico, Lynch travels frequently, pursuing issues of landscape, identity, and abstraction long established in her works on paper.

Linda, Sediment, 2022, Pastel and graphite on paper, 30 x 22-1/4 in.

Linda Lynch, Swag, 2007, Pastel and graphite on paper, 30 x 44 in.

SAM MIDDLETON

Sam Middleton was born in 1927. A mixed-media artist, whose choice medium was collage, Middleton grew up immersed in Harlem’s vibrant cultural and musical scene. At the Savoy Ballroom, he became acquainted with jazz music, which would remain a primary influence on his art throughout his career.

In the early 1950s, Middleton frequented the Cedar Tavern and formed close friendships with Franz Kline, Jackson Pollack, and Robert Motherwell. His circle of beat writer and artist friends soon gravitated to The Five Spot Café on the Lower East Side where jazz greats Cecil Taylor, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and Charlie Parker performed nightly. During this decade, jazz, the music that so inspired him, was changing. Compositions were never played the same way twice. Musicians emphasized improvisation, spontaneity, and creativity of sound. Middleton found inspiration in this new sound and worked to find his own creative voice. He said: “For me, improvisation is a galaxy of color. When I listen to music I feel like a soloist.” In his search to “paint sounds” Middleton was challenged by the changing tempo, the hint of melody, and the speed and dexterity of the music.

In 1962, he made the Netherlands his permanent home, appreciating the open-minded atmosphere compared to pre-Civil Rights America.

Middleton’s work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, Columbia Museum Of Art, The St Louis Museum of Art, The Amistad Research Center, The Studio Museum, Fisk University Galleries, the Hampton University Museum, the Howard University Museum, and the Stedelijk Museum.

He was included in the pivotal 1962 Whitney Museum exhibit, Forty Artists Under Forty, the Studio Museum’s exhibition An Ocean Apart: American Artists Abroad, and the Whitney Museum’s 2015 exhibition America Is Hard to See.

Sam Middleton, The Search, 1959, Oil and mixed media collage on masonite, 15-1/2 x 41 in.

JOAN MITCHELL

With her lively, gestural explosions of color and form, Joan Mitchell solidified her place in the predominantly masculine Abstract Expressionist movement that emerged in mid-century New York. The artist’s epic, large-scale abstractions feature all-over gestural brushwork and bold color palettes that hint at heir original source material: landscapes, sunflowers, and the natural world were favorite motifs.

While Mitchell spent her early career in New York, she eventually moved to the French countryside, where her work incorporated palettes and shapes that reflected the pastoral setting. Mitchell received both her BFA and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before going on to exhibit in New York, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, and beyond. Her work belongs in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre Pompidou, the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Her work has sold for eight figures at auction.

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, 1964 Oil, pastel, and graphite on paper, 16-3/4 x 13-3/4 in.

ANDY MOSES

Andy Moses is an artist who lives and works in Venice, California. He was born in Los Angeles in 1962 and attended California Institute of the Arts from 1979 to 1981. At CalArts he focused on performance, film, and painting, studying with Michael Asher, John Baldessari, and Barbara Kruger. In 1981 he moved to New York and worked for the artist Pat Steir. Later that year he developed a type of process painting that is simultaneously abstract and representational. Moses is interested in pushing the physical properties of paint through chemical reactions, viscosity interference, and gravity dispersion to create elaborate compositions that mimic nature and its forces. He was in his first group exhibition at Artists Space in 1986 entitled ‘Selections’. He had his first solo exhibition in New York at Annina Nosei Gallery in 1987. He has continued to exhibit his work in New York, Los Angeles, and abroad over the past thirty-five years. He moved back to Los Angeles in 2000 where he continues to refine and expand the vocabulary of his specific painting processes, imagery, and interrelationships with the technical and natural world.

Andy Moses, Geodynamics 1205, 2019, Acrylic on canvas over hexagonal shaped wood panel, 60 x 52 in.

ERIN PARISH

Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1966, Erin Parish creates deeply meditative work. Her abstract imagery alludes to the universal and the specific, inviting the viewer to reflect, interpret, and actively participate in bringing the piece to life.

Composed principally of fields of circles, Parish's paintings do not have primary focal points. Rather, a depth is implied through coats of resin, resulting in textured surfaces that guide the eye. Layered and dense, Parish's works convey a distinct tension between the textured surface and the underpainting resulting in structurally rigorous and complex compositions. Abstraction, as non-representative style, is void of all reference to our physical world. It allows viewers to interpret and project their own emotional and spiritual feelings onto it. Parish intends for a conversation to occur between the painting and the viewer – preferably over a significant length of time.

Parish likes to imagine that her paintings reside with people who meditate on them often, observing how they change under different lighting situations, seasons, and even internal emotional shifts. Her works' full complexity reveals itself through a gradual unraveling. Complex and subtle, her paintings are equally approachable and open.

Erin Parish, Cloud of Unknowing, 2015, Oil and resin on canvas, 36 x 60 in.

DAN RIZZIE

Dan Rizzie's multifaceted mixed-media pieces contain layers of newspaper, paint, wax, or dirt, and he often incorporates filigree, historic decorative patterns, and bold botanic imagery. A signature motif is graphic silhouettes of birds or flowers cast in front of decorative, abstract patterns. While his artistic sources are vast, Rizzie’s compositions are unified and explore traditional imagery in contemporary application.

Dan Rizzie, Jericho, 2007-23 Mixed media on canvas, 72 x 60 in.

LOUISE P. SLOANE

Louise P. Sloane has been active as an abstract painter since 1974, infusing her works with personal text that motivates her own experimentation. The visual language of her paintings continues the legacy of reductive and minimalist ideologies, while celebrating color and the human inclination towards mark making.

Sloane’s detail-oriented works are typically divided into rectangles or squares. The quadrangle has become a repetitive motif, often centrally featured within the context of a grid. In contrast to her iterative geometries, it is important to Sloane that the works present themselves as human made objects. Thick paint constructs repetitive handmade patterns, the physical motion of her brush strokes revealing the humanity of her practice. The surface holds Sloane’s signature extrusions. Painstakingly written and overwritten, Sloane’s inscribed text is a form of private meditation. Turned into a relief, and abstracted through color blocking, the text is interpreted through its physicality, not its meaning.

Contrasting color choices intensify the dimensionality of the surface texture. Sloane uses color straight-up, without mixing. Blending takes place optically, as one color reacts to the other, red against green, or blue against yellow.

Louise P. Sloane, Egg and Daughter Night, 2021, Acrylic paint and pastes on linen, 48 x 36 in.

HEIDI SPECTOR

Heidi Spector is a geometric abstractionist. She purposefully opts for her work to convey an upbeat and lively disposition by using vivid and repetitive patterns. Her work, inspired by techno beats and club life, projects a natural sense of optimism and joy. Inspired by popular music, each work’s title is based on song lyrics from recording artists such as Duke Ellington, Amy Winehouse, or Tiësto.

Her geometric compositions are created with acrylic paint on Russian birch panels, cubes, and columns. They are then coated in resin and blowtorched to create a glass-like reflective coating. The results are so pristine that the viewer can see their reflection, and thus become implicated in the work.

Spector has stated that American color field artists such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, and Frank Stella have largely inspired her work. However, the primary influence in her work is the music playing in her studio while she is working on a piece.

Heidi Spector currently lives and works in Montreal, Canada.

Heidi Spector, How Do You Like Your Love I, 2022, Acrylic with resin on birch panel, 30 x 30 x 2 in.

Heidi Spector, How Do You Like Your Love II, 2022, Acrylic with resin on birch panel, 30 x 30 x 2 in.

Heidi Spector, How Do You Like Your Love III, 2022, Acrylic with resin on birch panel, 30 x 30 x 2 in.

DIANE WALKER-GLADNEY

Diane Walker-Gladney is a contemporary abstract painter from Connecticut. She has garnered acclaim for her vibrant use of color, intricate layers, and whimsical subject matter.

Drawing inspiration from her early encounters with color, Diane's artistic palette was shaped by visits to the Yardage Shop, where she matched threads with fabric swatches for her mother. The silky fibers exposed her to the diverse hues and luxurious shades that continue to inform her work. Additionally, Diane's fascination with the illustrations of "Goodnight Moon" led her to recognize the significance of capturing fleeting moments, particularly those that encapsulate the essence of dusk.

Diane Walker-Gladney, Brand New Box of Crayons, 2023, Acrylic and graphite on canvas, 36 x 48 in.

To make an appointment, please contact the gallery at info@spaniermanmodern.com, or via telephone at 212-249-0619.

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Our gallery is located at 958 Madison Ave., 2nd floor, New York, NY, 10021.

Tuesday-Saturday, 10-6.