JAY KELLY
SCULPTURES & DRAWINGS
March 13 –April 17, 2010
Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent small-scale drawings and sculpture by Jay Kelly. It will be the artist’s eighth solo exhibition at the gallery, which will open March 13th and continue through April 17th. There will be an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, March 13th from 6-8 pm.
Originally a photorealist painter, Jay Kelly employs the same obsessive and controlled elements with his drawings of acrylic, graphite, and gouache to create this series of 5 x 5 inch drawings on vellum. Seemingly spontaneous and unconscious, upon closer inspection these drawings reveal perfectly controlled lines and balance of asymmetrical forms. The drawings are like haikus, each a self-contained world of elegant lines and blurred dreamlike shapes. This collection moves from airy, soft hues to saturated colors, rich and robust over translucent vellum.
Kelly’s sculptures are invented forms though they heavily refer to the fundamentals of found objects. Some of the small abstract wire constructions are drawings in space and have a light airiness and playful quality. Others, made with silver nickel, wood, and gesso are aged with patina and are more solid in appearance. Each measures no more than 10 inches high and 4 inches wide, including their small wooden bases.
Influences range from 1950s Abstraction, Surrealism, 20th century architecture, jazz music from the 1950s and 60s, painting and graphic design from that period, and mid-century Scandinavian pottery, all of which get filtered through an idiosyncratic, yet eloquent aesthetic.
Jay Kelly’s work was included in New York/New Drawings, 1946-2007, works from the Sarah-Ann and Werner Kramarsky collection at Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Esteban Vicente in Segovia, Spain in 2009. His work was also included in What is a Line? Drawings from the Collection at Yale University Art Gallery, along with work by Richard Serra, Brice Marden, Carl Andre and others. Jay Kelly’s work is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The British Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, Werner Kramarsky and many others. For information and visuals, please contact the gallery.