Houston: Wade Wilson Art is pleased to announce Hard – Edge/Then & Now, an exhibit of paintings by special guest artist, Dan Gorski. The exhibit opens with a reception for the artist from 6-8 pm on Friday, January 10, 2014, and will remain on view through Saturday, February 15, 2014. Wade Wilson Art is located at 4411 Montrose Blvd., Ste. 200, Houston, Texas, 77006. Telephone is 713-521-2977. www.wadewilsonart.com
Dan Gorski’s exhibition draws from a broad chronological cross-section of his artistic history and reflects an evolution of aesthetic vision, a vision that manifests in the tenets of the early abstract/pop movement. Gorski earned his MFA at Yale in 1964. During that time, his work “dropped the figure reference and explored a geometry (of sorts which combined both) curved edges and hard edges,” states the artist. For Gorski, this marked a major turning point in both his career and in his painting.
Hard-Edge Painting reinforces the idea of the surface as a field of abstract forms while emphasizing the flatness of the surface (either canvas, paper, or wood). Hard-Edge Painting shows us clean edged, monochromatic areas of color that defy AbEx and Color Field’s freewheeling ambiguity in favor of a detached clarity of vision.
The artist points out “Cooler yet still spiritual, Hard-Edge Painting can trace its influences to Synthetic Cubism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus.
Gorski’s works from this period employed color more strongly and were influenced by Pop Art and recent availability of new acrylic paint colors. Many of the works suggest architectural structures by virtue of their underlying geometry.
The British critic, Lawrence Alloway, introduced the term to a wider audience in his title, “West Coast Hard-Edge”, in 1960. He wrote, “The whole picture becomes a unit; forms extend the length of the painting or are restricted to two or three tones. The result of this sparseness is that the spatial effect of figures on a field is avoided. This response to space may relate to contemporaneous obsession with exploring outer space, ignited by the success of the Soviet Sputnik Program of the late 1950’s.”
During the summer of 1965, Gorski painted in the countryside away from New York City. The focused time proved pivotal for him. Gorski notes, “I produced a breakthrough in the work taking clues from a section of a painting and (then) constructing it in 3D.”
“By fall,” Gorski adds, “I was thoroughly involved in the construction process and painting of several pieces. I was invited to exhibit in several group shows in and around New York City and, in 1966, (my work) was included in the Primary Structures show at the Jewish Museum.”
Primary Structures proved to be among the more auspicious and significant exhibits of the time; not only in the history of art as the Hard-Edge movement established itself, but for Dan Gorski, inclusion of his important early works in the exhibition at the Jewish Museum, served as a defining moment for his aesthetic vision which ultimately confirmed his place in the history of art.
Hard-Edge: Then and Now, an exhibit of works by Dan Gorski from the early 1960’s to the present, on view at Wade Wilson Art, reflects the life-long commitment of one man to his artistic vision. Gorski’s singular devotion to exploring, expanding, and understanding his vision remains evident as we examine the paintings of his career.
For additional information, please contact Ken General at 713-521-2977 or ken@wadewilsonart.com