Cut, draped and reimagined: How two titans reshaped postwar American abstraction

Cut, Draped And Reimagined: How Two Titans Reshaped Postwar American Abstraction

Installation view of 'Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1966-2006' at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Set up view of „Kenneth Noland: Work 1966-2006“ at Tempo Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Tempo Gallery

Tempo Gallery Seoul brings Kenneth Noland, Sam Gilliam collectively in concurrent reveals
By Park Han-sol

Right this moment, it’s not troublesome to ascertain work breaking free from the normal confines of flat rectangles. Artists push these boundaries day by day — tearing, slitting, draping, slicing and stitching their canvases into daring new kinds.

However many years in the past, such formal experimentation was nothing wanting radical. Among the many trailblazers behind this revolutionary departure had been Kenneth Noland (1924-2010) and Sam Gilliam (1933-2022), visionaries who every redefined postwar American abstraction.

In Noland’s fingers, painted sq. canvases remodeled into elongated rhombuses, irregular heptagons and kooky assemblages. Gilliam deserted the canvases’ picket stretchers altogether, as an alternative hanging pigment-soaked material freely from ceilings. Their spirit of innovation additionally prolonged to the way in which they infused shade into their luscious compositions.

Now, these two towering abstractionists are in dialogue at Tempo Gallery Seoul, the place the 2 reveals — “Kenneth Noland: Work 1966-2006” and “Sam Gilliam: The Movement of Coloration” — unfold concurrently throughout the gallery’s three flooring.

Installation view of 'Kenneth Noland: Paintings 1966-2006' at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Set up view of „Kenneth Noland: Work 1966-2006“ at Tempo Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Tempo Gallery

Noland is acknowledged as a founding member of the Washington Coloration Faculty, a motion rooted in Coloration Area portray — a non-representational method that emphasised unbroken expanses and swathes of shade because the driving power of composition.

His chromatic works, outlined by crisp-edged pigments organized in concentric circles, stripes, plaids, diamonds and chevrons, had been instrumental in forging the visible language of postwar abstraction in the USA.

Noland’s fascination with geometric kinds quickly prolonged past the composition and started influencing the very form of his canvases. This evolution is clear in his signature work from the Sixties by way of the early 2000s on view within the Seoul present.

“By creating formed work that took uncommon, asymmetrical kinds, Noland emphasised the objecthood of the portray,” the gallery mentioned.

This exhibition marks the primary devoted presentation of the abstractionist in Seoul since 1995 when he was featured at Gana Artwork Gallery.

Installation view of 'Sam Gilliam: The Flow of Color' at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Set up view of „Sam Gilliam: The Movement of Coloration“ at Tempo Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Tempo Gallery

After their promenade by way of the backyard of Noland’s formed canvases, guests ascend to the gallery’s third flooring, the place Gilliam’s radiant watercolors and „Drape work,“ produced between 2018 and 2022, appear to spill from the partitions and the ceilings.

Although he was the primary Black artist to symbolize the U.S. Pavilion on the 1972 Venice Biennale, Gilliam remained largely ignored by the distinguished artwork world till his later years. And in contrast to a lot of his Black contemporaries through the Civil Rights Motion, his work remained resolutely summary, eschewing overt political commentaries — a stance that sparked debate throughout the neighborhood.

But his items had been audacious in their very own proper.

It was within the late Sixties when the artist first liberated his pigment-stained materials completely from picket frames and suspended them from ceilings in sinuous curves. His now-canonical drape work thus remodeled flat rectangular canvases into free-flowing, curtain-like installations.

“The 12 months 1968 was one among revelation and willpower,” he as soon as mentioned. “One thing was within the air, and it was in that spirit that I did the drape work.”

Installation view of 'Sam Gilliam: The Flow of Color' at Pace Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Pace Gallery

Set up view of „Sam Gilliam: The Movement of Coloration“ at Tempo Gallery Seoul / Courtesy of Tempo Gallery

His relentless experimentation with colours and materiality additionally birthed luminous watercolor abstractions on Japanese washi paper. He soaked the paper in numerous pigments — considerably harking back to tie-dye — earlier than folding and distressing them. The ensuing creases and pleats gave the flat floor a placing sense of three-dimensionality.

“Via this medium, he got here to know shade and type as bodily, textural presences that attain past portray’s two-dimensional floor,” Tempo Gallery famous.

Each “Kenneth Noland: Work 1966-2006” and “Sam Gilliam: The Movement of Coloration” run by way of March 29 on the Seoul gallery.

Přejít nahoru