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New York, New York, June 17, 2009‐The Gerald Peters Gallery, New York is pleased to present Along A Long Line, an exhibition of paintings by Mike Glier, who traveled along the 70th longitude from the Arctic to the equator to record the landscape. The exhibition opens Friday, September 18th and runs to October 23rd. There is a press preview on Thursday, September 17th with the artist in attendance.
In the introduction to the book, Along a Long Line, which accompanies the exhibition, Glier describes the project as follows;
Landscape is vital and human survival within its
mass always in question, but more so because of
accelerating environmental changes. Compelled
by the pleasure and politics of working within
this urgent scene, I set out with a French easel
and pack full of oil paint to record a quarter turn
around the earth. Along a Long Line is the story
of this year‐long trip along the line of longitude
which begins in the Arctic Circle, runs through
my studio in upstate New York and continues to
the equator. I left my studio thinking, “When I
die, I want to know that I’ve used myself up.” At
first this might seem glum, but it’s really an
optimistic thought about finding adventure
within oneself.
in each of four places. The chosen locations are
dotted equally along this great imaginary line
and represent different types of ecosystems. The
trip began in the summer of 2007 with a visit to
Pangnirtung, Canada, an Inuit village on the
Arctic tundra. In the fall, to take advantage of
the “drier” season, I traveled due south to the
equatorial rainforest of Ecuador and settled near the Jatun Sacha Reserve, a 2500 hectare ecological preserve on the Napo
River, which shelters one of the world’s most diverse collections of plant, animal and insect species.
Then in the winter of the new year, the adventure continued in St. John, U.S. Virgin Islands, 14,000 acres of which has been
designated by the United Nations as part of the biosphere reserve network. The trip concluded in the urban landscape of
New York City.
long line, however, was the idea of visualizing the earth as a shared space, sectioned by scientific measure rather than by
political boundaries.
The exhibition is composed of 40 paintings made outdoors and 4, larger studio works based on the plein air compositions. The
paintings are colorful abstractions, in the tradition of Modernist landscape. In a recent lecture at the NY Studio School, Glier quipped, "As you look at my paintings you might be thinking of Dove or Hartley, or Davis or even Hans Hofmann. I didn’t invite them
on the trip, but they came anyway."
Like the Modernists who came before, Glier communicates the richness of the world through analogy as well as description. About
the St. John paintings, Glier notes: "The Caribbean, for example is a sensuous place that comes to you through your eyes and your nose and your ears and your
skin. There is water on skin, and sun on skin, and sand on skin and coral on skin. And to convey some of this tactility I brush,
Mike Glier, November 20, 2007Rainforest
Canopy, San Cudo, Ecuador, 80ºF.
wipe, knife, feather, splash, poke, tickle and abrade the surface of the picture in an attempt to give the feeling of the place as
well as the look of the place."
Although Glier has become an accomplished practitioner of painting, he has maintained through his career a strong interest in
conceptual art. A student in the 1970’s of Robert Morris, Lucy Lippard and an acquaintance of Sol LeWitt, who was a significant
mentor, Glier complements the paintings with a web‐based work of stories, essays and photographs from the trip. This site,
Alongalongline.com, a day to day account of the adventure, is a nod to conceptual artists like Cage, Spoerri and Kaprow, who insisted
that daily life can be experienced as art if it is framed as such.
Along Long Line is the second installment in a three part project to visualize the globe with a small French easel. The first project, Latitude, in which the artist painted on one place over a year to record the effects of the earth’s seasonal tilt, was exhibited at Mass Moca in 2008‐2009. Antipodes, the third project, began in July of 2009 with a trip to Botswana, which is to be followed by a visit to Hawaii, it’s antipode. More antipodal pairings are to come and the project can be followed at Antipodes.us.
A veteran of over thirty solo exhibitions and winner of several prestigious awards, Glier has had a solo Project exhibit at MoMA, has
been included in a Whitney Biennial , and received the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in painting.
This current Mike Glier exhibition which opened in our Santa Fe Gallery in June travels to the New York gallery and then follows to
the Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown, Massachusetts from October 31, 2009 to February 21, 2010.
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