Stanley Whitney, Untitled, 2016. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Callum Innes
Callum Innes, Exposed Painting Dioxazine Violet, 2012. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Scottish painter Callum Innes is known for charged abstract paintings that work within the tradition of the monochrome. His washes of color, with their subtle gradations and interrupting rivulets, might first call to mind the pours and drips of Color Field painting, but he achieves these effects through a distinctive method. After applying a layer of paint to the canvas, Innes “unpaints” it by brushing over it with turpentine. He repeats this process to build the layers of pigment that give his paintings their mysterious, luminous quality. The violet sections of this particular work summon an almost textile quality beside the severe contrast of black and white.
Jacqueline Humphries
Jacqueline Humphries, Untitled, 1994. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
This incredible serial work by Jacqueline Humphries comprises 36 panels grouped together. Taken individually, each panel iterates on a seeming opposition between a narrow, orange and ochre form made up of only a few brushstrokes, and a wider section of blue and black, monumental by contrast. Repeated and aligned in a grid, the panels become distinctly geometric, offering a regular rhythm within which variations of form can play. Born in New Orleans and active since the 1980s, that moment when painting died yet again, Humphries has experimented across multiple tendencies. While her earlier work explored expressionist modes, her practice has also interrogated the relationship of painting to the digital. This work seems almost to toggle between the two, drawing our attention to repetition as the source of something new.
Walead Beshty
Walead Beshty, 2 Sided Mirror Pair, 2010. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
In this vibrant work, Los Angeles-based artist Walead Beshty wields the possibilities of photography to striking effect. In his practice, Beshty has explored the relationship between photography — that medium we might mistake for truth in representation — and reality. This particular diptych showcases two of Beshty’s photograms, produced through a camera-less process in which photographic paper is folded before being exposed to light. The resulting interlocking shapes and layered colors give a sense of why Beshty has called his work “concrete” photography. The two prints seem to fold in and out of each other, bringing an impression of constant motion.
Stanley Whitney
Stanley Whitney, Untitled, 2016. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
One can hardly consider geometric abstraction without thinking of Stanley Whitney, the prolific, Philadelphia-born painter who has been experimenting with color and form since the 1960s. In his singular method, Whitney assembles gridded combinations of colored blocks and lines, improvising as a jazz musician would. According to Whitney, “Color dictates the structure, not the other way round.” This style developed in part under the influence of Roman art and architecture, drawing on Whitney’s time in Rome during the 1990s. Though his oil paintings can establish an almost monumental effect, this gouache on paper showcases a looser beauty.
Hisao Domoto
Hisao Domoto, Solution de Continuite #26, 1966. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Japanese artist Hisao Domoto became a devotee of Michel Tapié’s Art Informel movement while studying in Paris during the 1950s. He developed his signature style in 1956, using oil paint in thick layers and incorporating circles and other rounded forms. That style was guided by Domoto’s traditional Japanese Nihonga training, engaging the compositional rules and spiritual ideals of that lineage. Significantly, Domoto also introduced the members of Art Informel to Japanese Gutai. In this work, Domoto’s interest in the materiality of paint creates a multidimensional space. The thicker strokes of black paint appear almost wet against the smooth, regular pattern of black circles on a cobalt background, seeming to invite the viewer into another world.
Rana Begum
Rana Begum, No. 319, 2012. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Rana Begum works across painting, sculpture, and installation, often using industrial materials in her explorations of light, geometry, and color. Born in Bangladesh but raised partly in England, Begum’s practice deftly combines minimalist and constructivist impulses with personal inspiration. Begum connects her use of pattern to the repetition of childhood Qur’an recitals, as well as to the use of geometric imagery in Islamic art. Here, Begum’s folded steel object celebrates the capacity of art’s simplest elements — line, color, shape — to evoke whatever the viewer’s eye might be open to. A profound calm juxtaposed by the enduring vitality of color gives this work a patient, meditative quality.
Hsiao Chin
Hsiao Chin, Tension-I, 1986. Modern & Contemporary Art: Online Auction, New York.
Shanghai-born painter Hsiao Chin trained in Taipei. In 1956, he became one of the founders of Eastern Art Group, also known as Tung fang, one of the earliest modern art groups in Taiwan. Chin and his fellow members sought to synthesize modernism and traditional Chinese painting, bringing the influence of American abstraction to Taiwan, in defiance of Chinese government policies. As Chin's career progressed, he became increasingly interested in Eastern spiritual philosophies, especially Zen and Taoism. In this elegant painting, Chin’s restraint and masterful wielding of composition yields the sublime tension referenced in the work's title. Form and void seem to toy with each other in a delicate balance.
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