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D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. is pleased to announce the opening of its exhibition Four Optic Visionaries which includes over thirty works of 1960s Op Art by Richard Anuszkiewicz (b.1930), Mon Levinson (b.1926), Sue Fuller (1914-2006), and Tadasuke Kuwayama (b.1935), who exhibited in the US under the name Tadasky. Each of these artists received critical and popular attention after their inclusion in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye which put Op Art on the map. More recently, these artists were included in the Columbus Museum of Art’s Optic Nerve exhibition in 2007. Four Optic Visionaries provides for the first time the chance to view a broad selection of each artist’s 1960s work. As a whole the artwork captures the technological promise and the growing understanding of the human mind in the 1960s.
With over a dozen paintings by both Richard Anuszkiewicz and Tadasky, one sees the extensive variations achieved within the formal restraints of a single geometric shape (the square for Anuszkiewicz, who studied with Josef Albers at Yale in the 1950s, and the circle for Tadasky). Within a limited geometry both painters explore the dynamic interaction of color and bring attention to the viewer’s perception of color and shape within a two-dimensional surface.
Mon Levinson and Sue Fuller embraced the new materials of the 1960s, creating sculptures and constructions involving plastics. In his innovative constructions, Levinson developed a unique hybrid of painting, sculpture, printmaking, and photography, which result in extraordinary kinesthetic experiences using multiple layers of Plexiglas. Sue Fuller also seized upon the potential of new materials, which were consistent with her progressive worldview and Bauhaus training. Her constructivist “string compositions” of plastic threads began in the 1950s when she worked alongside industry in Pittsburgh to develop plastic technology which corresponded to her vision of drawing with thread.
Joe Houston, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art at the Columbus Museum of Art writes, “This exhibition offers a rare opportunity to rediscover four distinct voices of optical art through seminal works comparable to those held in important public collections. The diverse selection provides a small yet representative cross-
section of Op at its aegis. Though inexorably linked with the postwar decades of cultural upheaval, scientific curiosity, and technological triumph, the art remains perennially fresh to our eyes. Its continuing relevance and impact is due in part to abstract purity, devoid of the symbols and narrative of any particular cultural moment, and a serious investigation of the essential visual elements of form, color, light, and perspective that have long challenged artists.”
Op art shares with other significant movements of the 1960s a fascination with high-tech materials, industrial fabrication, serialism, systematics seen in Minimalism, and an interest in the common culture and the democratization of aesthetics seen in Pop. Four Optic Visionaries with the work of Richard Anuszkiewicz, Tadasky, Mon Levinson, and Sue Fuller displays Op art executed by some of its most talented practitioners.
A catalogue with essay by Joe Houston, Associate Curator of Contemporary Art, Columbus Museum of Art and 58 color reproductions is available upon request. The exhibition will be on view from September 16, 2008 to November 15, 2008. D. Wigmore Fine Art, Inc. is located at 730 Fifth Avenue, Suite 602, New York, NY. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 10-6 and Saturday 10-5. For further information, call (212) 581-1657 or visit our website at www.dwigmore.com.
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