“heavylightweight”
lightness of color and action // gravitas of conviction and tradition
curated by Douglas Witmer
Works By: Karen Baumeister, Michael Brennan, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Daniel Levine, Warren Rohrer
May 2 - June 1, 2014
Opening Reception Friday May 2, 6-10pm

[Images]

PHILADELPHIA, PA-
heavylightweight is a focused group of paintings selected by Philadelphia artist Douglas Witmer. This is a show of very light work in terms of the dominant color of the paintings and the apparent painting actions with which they were made.  Simultaneously, the works in the exhibition demonstrate each artist’s supreme cognizance of their materials methods.  Even as they make paintings that seem utterly spare, these artists are bonded in relationships deeply grounded in painting’s long and storied history.

Karen Baumeister makes near-monochrome paintings whose color is a result of an intuitive but rigorous process of “finding” through daily observation and observation of the painting process itself.  Controlled painting gestures are sealed upon each other in numerous layers resulting in dense surfaces that frequently extend just beyond the edges of painting support.  Karen Baumeister (b.1962; lives near Philadelphia, PA) teaches at The Fleisher Art Memorial, Philadelphia, and Montgomery County Community College.  Her work has recently been exhibited at Larry Becker Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Proto Gallery, Hoboken, NJ, and Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York City.

The recent “razor paintings” by Michael Brennan included in this exhibition are often made in one session, juxtaposing elements of geometric and gestural abstraction.  Keenly interested in how abstract painting can both reflect and comment upon contemporary culture, Brennan consciously relates the physicality of these works to the idea of digital devices like smart phones or tablets, where he observes that “an enormous amount of information is concentrated on small objects.”  Michael Brennan (b.1965; lives Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited nationally and internationally for the past two decades.  His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, ARTnews, and many others. He has also written extensively about art for leading art publications. Brennan’s work is included in collections such as the Baltimore Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Jose Museum of Art. He teaches at Pratt Institute.  He is represented by MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, NY.

Jeffrey Cortland Jones works with dualities informed by attitudes from both high modernism and graffiti culture.  His paintings made with spray enamel, often on thin acrylic panels, feature color organized in softly geometric shapes.  “Touchless” as their surfaces are, they nevertheless feel tectonic in their visual strength.  Jeffrey Cortland Jones (b.1975, lives in Cincinnati, OH) teaches painting at The University of Dayton.  His work has been exhibited extensively in the United States.  Recent venues include Laura Moore Fine Arts, Dallas, Hoffman LaChance Contemporary, St. Louis, and Cheryl Hazan Contemporary Art, New York.  He is represented by Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York City.

For over two decades, Daniel Levine has made monochrome paintings using only red, yellow, blue, or white.  This commitment to the basic building blocks of color is but one conceptual underpinning to painting’s history evident in the artist’s work.  Attentive to each detail in his process, and working in repeated layers that can accumulate to 20 or 30, Levine teases infinite variety out of his chosen limits.  Daniel Levine (b.1959; lives in New York City) is represented in the the Panza Collection, Italy, The Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano, Switzerland, The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, Museum of Contemporary Art Tucson and private collections in Europe and the United States.  He is represented by Churner and Churner, New York City.

Warren Rohrer found his way into reductive abstraction over several decades of painting plein air.  The effects of natural light and the representation of light in painting were of major concern to the artist his entire life.  By the mid 1970s, Rohrer was making paintings that organized brushstrokes into systematic layers to create evocative fields of floating color that still communicated references to the pastoral landscape.  Warren Rohrer (1927–1995) taught for 25 years at the Philadelphia College of Art. The subject of a retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2003, Warren Rohrer’s work is in many museum collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Denver Art Museum, Smith College Museum of Art and the Delaware Art Museum.  His work is represented by Locks Gallery, Philadelphia.

Exhibition curator Douglas Witmer is an artist based in Philadelphia, and is well-known for his paintings.  His work has been exhibited internationally.  He is a member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid.