REDUCTIVE: an analysis of contemporary minimalism
Since the 1960's, minimalism has tested the boundaries of artistic simplicity. Sentiments introduced by artists such as Sol Lewitt, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, and Barnett Newmann still reverberate strongly within today’s diverse art world.
Thorough pursuit has brought nine artists from all over the world to the Mahan Gallery who unite based on new concepts of reductive art, paring down modes and thematics to arrive at comparably clean solutions. The tools used include monochromatic palettes, plots of light, simple geometry, symmetry, essences, and grids. Though the approaches and final solutions seem vastly different, the artists are linked together in their search for the simplest possible gestures while still enacting something conceptually profound. And it is within these inflections where the new minimalists find their voice.
This current take on reductive painting, sculpture, and photography raises new questions about the relevance, effectiveness, anonymous beauty, and underlying meaning that simplified gestures can imply. Similarly, early Minimal themes including commerce, impersonality, rejection of expression, self-reference, and anti-romance have been transformed here accordingly.
Reductive is a suggestive inquiry into the effects of essential visual art. Though far removed from the movement’s onset, the artists of Reductive share similar inclinations to their predecessors. In a public forum where bombardment of imagery constantly surrounds, their work sticks within a concentrated range strangely coexisting with media blitz.The intentions vary, but the overall surface-oriented sentiment survives. Reductive then becomes a fresh artistic endeavor, an updated take on mid-century themes, and the melding of nine individual, compatible minds.
Eugene CONSTAN is a Brooklyn based artist. He received his BFA from The Cooper Union in New York in 1986 and was granted The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc. award. Constan is influenced by patterns and traces of imagery that emerge through processes of demolition and decay. His works pull beauty out of the commonplace, drawing reference from industrial construction sites. Constan has most recently exhibited at the Hunter College MFA Gallery, the Willamsburg Art and Historical Center in Brooklyn, New York, and has been represented by the Bernard Toale Gallery in Boston.
Greg DAVIS' works underline the qualities of paint; slowness, conflation, and the compression of time onto a single surface. Depicting familiar images of landscapes and architecture, Davis interrupts pictorial resolution with the cognitive static of abrasive abstraction. Works included in Reductive explore minimalist architectures that pervade our built environment. His work was included in the 2005 American Drawing Biennial and has been exhibited in New York, Dresden, and Columbus. Greg holds a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design.
Adam ELLIOTT is a Columbus-based artist and received his BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design in 2004. His work is the culmination of thorough image mining and cultural research. The multifaceted arrangements splice pop culture with an array of historical references, forcing them into an agreeable relationship. Once combined, the two create a revelatory new conceptual dialogue. Elliott’s recent work directly references the movement of Minimalism, concisely embodying ideas of nostalgia and progress.
Joshua ERB is a Columbus-based artist who has studied locally at the Columbus College of Art and Design and abroad in Florence, Italy. Erb doctors simple imagery from various sources such as religious record covers, instructional printed media, and art publications. The simply referential images are then cut up, reordered, and enlarged to reveal new, thoroughly obscured meanings. Traces of the artist’s indirect correspondence are evident throughout: repetition, rough cut shapes, elementary design choices, and common color palettes. These factors convert the once obvious icons into strange, enigmatic versions of their former selves.
Owen HARVEY'S work explores an idea of seriality through repetition. In creating a composition, he focuses on the possibilities from the structure itself. Once conceived, the image is then repeated with an emphasis on the relationship between the differences within the series. Difference is exaggerated through color, size and texture. He understands the work as inter-connected fragments participating in an open-ended whole. Owen has recently exhibited in the Hudson Valley where he lives. He did his undergraduate work at Bennington College in Vermont and earned his MFA at SUNY New Paltz, where he currently teaches painting and drawing.
Jason LOMBARDI is on a crusade in a world of plastic, concrete and steal run by machines. Each day he continues his quest for human sensitivity in the imitation and alteration of objects by flesh and bones. One day he found himself tangled in a web of opulence in the Upper East Side of Manhattan and in an attempt to neutralize its effects he swallowed it whole. While inside his body, the sumptuous net was distilled, producing concentrated forms that the artist placed inside a visual prison over which he presides. Jason happily lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Katja MATER is based in Amsterdam and has received various art prizes and show inclusions, including the Gagosian Gallery, the 4th Berlin Biennial, and a solo exhibition at PSWAR. Mater has been exhibited in various cities worldwide, including Lima, Athens, Sarajevo, and Istanbul. Her work calls into question the arrangement of various forms of art, projecting extreme sections of light onto otherwise common settings. The frames are then photographed, resulting in a new, distinctive dialect. Her minimal approach does not undermine the complexity and power of the resulting visual experience; it enhances the careful analysis that inevitably follows. For Reductive, Mater has enacted two hauntingly dark pieces that boast a quiet, ambivalent beauty.
Since graduating from the masters program at the University of Iowa in 2001, Carrie POLLACK has exhibited all over the world including stops in Seattle, Berlin, Texas, Brooklyn, and most recently at the Wendy Cooper Gallery in Chicago. Her 2005 work entitled The Moisture on Rocks has been included in the Reductive exhibition as a consummate example of post-minimal thought, subjecting geometric shapes to a decidedly handmade approach. Throughout the scope of her art, Pollack attempts to condense ideas and experiences into simplified diagrammatic structures.
Roland THOMPSON has shown his craft referential works all over the Western United States, has been reviewed in the New York Times, and is currently affiliated with Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn. Originally from Utah, Thompson moved east to finish his masters at the Virginia Commonwealth University. His pieces included in Reductive seem to combine ancient ideas of geometric beauty with a contemporary, regimented approach. Thompson starts with a succinct concept or plan before allowing his subconscious departures to promote curious visual stimulation.
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