Geometrix: Encoded Abstraction: Don Dudley, Jean Jinho Kim, Andrew Masullo, Harvey Quaytman, David Simpson, Li Trincere, Don Voisine, Neil Williams, Norman Zammitt
Washington D.C
Pazo Fine Art is thrilled to present Geometrix: Encoded Abstraction, a vibrant, energetic exhibition featuring paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Don Dudley, Jean Jinho Kim, Andrew Masullo, Harvey Quaytman, David Simpson, Li Trincere, Don Voisine, Neil Williams, and Norman Zammitt. Join us for an opening reception on Saturday, February 10th, from 6 to 8 PM. The exhibition will remain on view until March 16th, 2024.
Derived from the formalist traditions of geometric abstraction and hard-edge techniques, this diverse assembly of artists coheres around a joint venture to instill a sense of logical order and beauty within abstraction, predominantly through a reverence for the pure, foundational aspects of painting. Taken together, their individual explorations of natural sequences, architectural structures, mathematical gradients, and minimalist light and color, function to evidence how systematically arranged elements within a composition can generate not only active optical space, but also emotional and psychological effects that softly and suggestively approximate the realm of the divine.
This exhibition highlights a two-row series of Neil Williams' drawings on graph paper, each serving as a plan for the shaped canvas paintings that catapulted his career in the 60’s under the framework of “Systemic Painting.” This term, coined by curator Lawrence Alloway, refers to an approach to painting theoretically distinct from Abstract Expressionism, because the end state of the painting is known beforehand, with the upshot that this doesn’t exclude “empirical modifications of a work in progress,” but it would “focus them within a system; a unified whole, the parts of which demonstrate some regularities.” While not every artist in this cohort premeditates the end result of their work, they converge acutely on the second half of the definition, wherein expressing their painterly intuition and on-the-fly decisions occur within the context of a carefully designed system with certain, standardized rules.
Amongst the formal, hard-edge painters, Quaytman, Williams, Trincere, and Voisine, these systems involve intricately constructed, multidimensional compositions that used limited, often monochromatic palettes to delineate structured boundaries in space. Their work tugs abstract painting towards the realm of sculpture, especially evident in the shaped canvases on view, where interior, elemental forms are rendered in tension with the canvas outline. Meanwhile, members with a particular interest in color field, Zammitt, Dudley, Masullo, and Simpson, engage in meticulous studies of color progressions, rubrics and vibrational frequencies associated with hue. This methodological, precise and sequential approach to color plays the role of the system within which to make guided, abstract decisions. As the sculptor of the group, Kim finds systematicity in the use of found objects that establish a baseline of familiarity. Establishing this base allows her to venture into an exploration of new shapes, structures, color combinations, and spatial geometric relationships between forms that incite pointed and unexpected emotional reactions.
The works presented in this exhibition stand as testament to the intellectual power of natural mathematics (in both geometry and color) to shape aesthetic, emotional, and spiritual experiences. “Geometrix: Encoded Abstraction” invites you to immerse yourself in the interconnected world of these artists, where systematic arrangements of abstract choices give birth to profound and transcendent instances of artistic expression and perception.
Artist Bio:
Don Dudley was born in 1930 in Los Angeles, California. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. Over the course of his career, his work has been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. His solo exhibitions include Pam Adler Gallery (1978, 1982, 1985), CUNY Baruch College (1982), I-20 Gallery (2011), and Magenta Plains (2017, 2019, 2022), all in New York. Other solo exhibitions were held at La Jolla Museum of Art (1959, 1964), I Gallery (1961, 1964), Comara Gallery (1963), and University of California Art Museum (1979), all in California. Internationally, he exhibited at Galerie Alfred Schmela (1976) and Galerie Thomas Zander (2013, 2018) in Germany, John Doyle Gallery (1975), and Galerie Farideh Cadot (1977, 1981) in France. Don Dudley's work is featured in public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Art, and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, among others. He currently lives and works in New York City.
Jean Jinho Kim was born in 1960 in Seoul, South Korea. She received her BFA from West Virginia University in Morgantown and her MFA from American University in Washington, D.C. She has had solo exhibitions at Le Bliss Gallery (2023), Incheon Open Port Museum (2023), and GeumBoSong Gallery (2023), all in South Korea. Additionally, she exhibited at The Woolly Mammoth Theatre (2023), Studio Gallery (2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), The Korean Consulate General (2012, 2014, 2017) in Washington DC, the Korean Community Center (2022) in NJ, VisArts 355 Pod Space (2020), and Gilchrist Museum of the Arts (2018) in Maryland, and MK Gallery (2011, 2013) in Virginia. She has also participated in group shows at the Kreeger Museum and the Phillips Collection in Washington DC, and Pazo Fine Art Gallery in Maryland, among numerous others. Jean Jinho Kim is currently living and working in the DC metropolitan area.
Andrew Masullo was born in 1957 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He received his BFA in Studio Art from Rutgers University. His solo exhibitions include André Emmerich, Joan Washburn, Feature Inc., Mary Boone, and Tibor de Nagy, all in New York; Paule Anglim in San Francisco; Daniel Weinberg and Zevitas/Marcus in Los Angeles; Steven Zevitas in Boston; Texas Gallery in Houston; Susanne Hilberry in Detroit; and a retrospective with Thomas Ammann Fine Art in Zurich. His paintings were featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art in their 2012 Biennial, as well as their recent group exhibition Fast Forward: Paintings from the 1980s (2017). He received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2011. Examples of Masullo’s work are included in the public collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; Montgomery Museum of Fine Art, AL; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland, KS; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Saratoga Springs, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, among numerous others. He currently lives and works in San Francisco.
Harvey Quaytman was born in 1937 in Far Rockaway, New York. He earned his BFA in painting at the Boston Museum School and Tufts University, Boston. During his lifetime, he had more than sixty solo exhibitions worldwide, including New York, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, Cologne, Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Oslo. His work is represented in museum collections around the globe, including those of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.; Tate Gallery, London, UK; Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebaek, Denmark; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. Quaytman’s first posthumous museum retrospective was organized at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, CA, in 2018.
David Simpson was born in 1928 in Pasadena, California. He received his BFA from the California School of Fine Arts (now SFAI) and MA from San Francisco State College (now SFSU). In addition to solo exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the de Young Museum, the Oakland Museum of Art, and the Laguna Art Museum, all in California, his work has been included in group exhibitions throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. Significant exhibitions include the Whitney Museum of American Art (1962) and MoMA (1963) in NY, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1965) and SFMoMA (1965) in CA, and the Portland Art Museum (1968) in Oregon. Simpson is represented in public and private collections that include the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Berkeley Art Museum, CA; M.H. de Young Museum, CA; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, NY; Laguna Art Museum, CA; Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Switzerland; Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; The Panza Collection, Switzerland, and Italy; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; and Seattle Museum of Art, WA. A monograph of his career, David Simpson: Works 1965 - 2015, was published by Radius Books in 2016.
Li Trincere was born in 1960 in East Village, New York. She received her BFA in Printmaking from Southampton College, NY, and her MFA in Painting from Hunter College, NY. Her work has been featured in solo and group shows at David Richard Gallery (2018, 2020), Minus Space (2011, 2016, 2023), Five Myles (2015), Hesse Flatow (2016), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (2017), 368 Space (1996), Berland Hall Gallery (1990), and Pretto Gallery (1989) in New York, Renate Kammery Gallerie (1990) in Hamburg, Germany, Newlyn Art Gallery (2018) in Newlyn, UK, and Galerie Rolfe Ricke (1989) in Cologne, Germany. Li Trincere has been featured in articles for Two Coats of Paint (2023), ArtDaily, and ARTFORUM. She is a three-time recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Painting Fellowship (1986, 1988, 2012) and has received grants from NYFA (1989), NEA (1991), and the Edward Albee Foundation. She currently lives and works in New York City.
Don Voisine was born in 1952 in Fort Kent, Maine. He attended the Portland School of Art (now known as the Maine College of Art) and received an honorary BFA in 2000. He has held solo exhibitions at McKenzie Fine Art (2009, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2021, 2023), in New York City, Pamela Salisbury Gallery (2020, 2022), and Jeff Bailey Gallery (2016) in Hudson, New York, Gregory Lind Gallery (2009, 2012, 2018) in San Francisco, and Robischon Gallery (2017, 2019, 2022) in Denver. In 2016, the Center for Maine Contemporary Art in Rockland organized a 15-year retrospective solo exhibition titled, Don Voisine X/V. His work is represented in the permanent collections of over twenty major museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art; The Phillips Collection; and Yale University Art Gallery. He is the recipient of numerous distinguished awards, including an Edward Albee Fellowship, The National Academy Museum Award, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, and a residency through the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program. Voisine has been a National Academician since 2010 and is a member of American Abstract Artists, serving as President from 2004-2012. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Neil Williams was born in 1934 in Bluff, Utah. At the age of 15, he ran away and joined the US Marine Corps, and went on to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been exhibited at the Green Gallery (1964) and Andre Emmerich Gallery (1966, 1968) in New York City, and the Dwan Gallery (1966) in Los Angeles. He was featured in the “Systemic Painting” (1966) group show at the Guggenheim alongside Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Mangold, Agnes Martin, Kenneth Nolan, and Robert Ryman, championing his shaped canvases as an experiment in hardline abstraction. He participated in the Whitney Art Annuals (1967, 1973) and received the Guggenheim fellowship in 1968. Examples of Williams’s work can be found in public collections throughout the United States, including the Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, Pennsylvania; the MIT-List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado; the Guild Hall Museum of East Hampton, East Hampton, New York; the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, Florida; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York. A posthumous exhibition of Williams’s work was held at the Galleria Luisa Strina in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1989.
Norman Zammitt was born in 1931 in Toronto, Canada. He received his Associates Degree from Pasadena City College in Pasadena, CA, and his MFA from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, CA. He passed away in 2007 in Pasadena, but over the course of his prolific career, he held solo exhibitions at the Pasadena City College Art Gallery, California (1988); the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (1978); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1977); and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, California (1968). Notable group exhibitions include Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950–1970, Getty Center, Los Angeles (2011–12), and The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting, 1980–1895 (1987) and American Sculpture of the Sixties (1967), both at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Zammitt’s work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Library of Congress, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Seattle Art Museum; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California; and Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The Palm Springs Art Museum will open the survey exhibition Norman Zammitt: Gradations in February of 2024.
Opening reception: Saturday, February 10th, 2024, 6-8 pm
PFA - Washington D.C
1932 9th Street NW, #C102, (Enter from 9 1/2 Street), Washington, D.C 20001
Thursday - Saturday, 11 AM - 6 PM
