June Kelly Gallery


Bruce Dorfman Bio

 Affirmation, an exhibition of new works by Bruce Dorfman -- arresting abstract assemblages in combined media fusing painting and sculpture that resist predictable spatial boundary, will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, on Thursday, June 16.  The exhibition will remain on view through July 29.

Dorfman with an impressive exhibition history exceeding more than five decades has an abstract language of his own that underlines his dual focus in creating a strong art experience through geometric structure and through intriguingly sensuous luminosity.

Dorfman’s innovative and provocative abstractions often reflect his defiance of probable surface order by his scrambling into rational space layers of additional visual planes.  There’s a certain physicality and redefinition of space in his constructions with the adhering of mundane, discarded and perhaps disparate objects, there is also emphasis, says Phyllis Braff, former art critic for the New York Times and historian, on risk, for Dorfman still seeks ways to examine and extend every potential for an even stronger art experience.

Dorfman writes, “The act of artistic creation is a wholehearted affirmation of life.  I make I make no separation between the many meanings of my art and whatever the many meanings of my life may be.  Whatever goes on in my paintings is simply an extension of whatever else I do, think, feel and believe, from day to day and year to year.  The way my art looks, and the feelings my art reflects, is not the result of a self-conscious decision, but the result of a deeply felt need, and a use of formal means, as necessary to the work.  Both the need and the formal means are rooted in an extreme intensity of experience and choice.

I am very much driven by a lasting, abstract notion and ideal of beauty.  I try to get some of this into my work through an ongoing process of strengthening and clarification.  In all my art, I seek strength of statement through refinement, elaboration and simplicity of form.  All of this is somehow driven by a need to see a kind of beauty that is not already there.  If it were already there, I would not need to create it.

“My art is never 'about a subject,’ continues Dorfman, nor does it deal exclusively with some consideration or preoccupation about technique or form.  Each work is a summation and consolidation of innermost feelings and outlook.  I do not seek to associate or identify with any particular approach, genre, agenda or 'school' of art.  Emphases, risks and approach evolve through time, from one work to another.  It seems to me that each and every work is inevitably new, with its own problems and joys.  The problems are always in abundance, but the joys remain.”

 

Born New York City
Lives and works in New York City

Education
1958 B.A., University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA with Mauricio Lasansky, Stuart Edie and Historian
  Roy Seibere
1951-52 The Art Students League of New York; with Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Arnold Blanch,
  Charles H. Alston

Solo Exhibitions
2022 Affirmations: New Works in Combined Media, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2018-19 Inclusive Moments-Selected Works, 1952-2015, Gallery of the American Fine Arts Society, The
  Art Students League of New York
2018 Currents: Paintings in Combined Media, 2016-2018, June Kelly Gallery, New York; catalogue
2016 BRUCE DORFMAN: PRESENT PAST PRESENT, Paintings, Drawings, and Combined
  Media, DiMattio Gallery of Rechnitz Hall, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ;
  retrospective, catalogue
2015 Bruce Dorfman: Recent Work, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2013 The Italian Kimono: Selected Works 2002-2013, Elizabeth V. Sullivan Gallery, The Art Students
  League of New York, Vytlacil Campus, Sparkhill, NY
2011 Bruce Dorfman: Recent Work in Combined Media, Zane Bennett Gallery, Santa Fe, NM; brochure
2010 Mixed Media in Small Scale, Broadhurst Gallery, Pinehurst, NC
Windsock, Kouros Gallery, New York; brochure
2008 Propeller: Paintings in Combined Media, Kouros Gallery, New York; catalog
2005 Aria, Kouros Gallery, New York
Bruce Dorfman and the League, Kouros Gallery, New York
2004 From Here to There, Galerie Dionisi, West Hollywood, CA
Points, Roseline Koener Gallery, Westhampton Beach, NY
2003 Piero’s Bell Tower, Kouros Gallery, New York; brochure
2001 To Piero, Roseline Koener Gallery, Westhampton Beach, NY
From Italy, The Reece Galleries, New York
2000 Exodus, Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, CA
1999 Bruce Dorfman: Assemblage-Paintings, Roseline Koener Gallery, Westhampton Beach,  NY;
  catalog
Recent Work, The Reece Galleries, New York
Painting, Collage, Assemblage, J. J. Brookings Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1998 Bruce Dorfman, Krisal Galerie, Geneva, Switzerland
1996 Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York
1995 Stone Chime, Korean Cultural Service, Gallery Korea, New York
Bronze Bell, The Bergen Museum of Art & Science, Teaneck, NJ
1994 Recent Work, Hal Katzen Gallery, New York
Recent Collages, Addison/Ripley Gallery, Washington, DC
1993 Bruce Dorfman, Art Center of Northern New Jersey, New Milford, NJ
1992 Bruce Dorfman, New School for Social Research, New York
1990 Paintings and Collages, 1989-1990, Susan Schreiber Gallery, New York
Addison/Ripley Gallery, Washington, DC
1988 Nightsongs and Placefields, Arras Gallery, New York
1986 Placefields, Arras Gallery, New York
1982 Recent Work, Arras Gallery, New York
1981 The Plumfields Paintings, New School for Social Research, New York
1978 Hillsides, Nobe Gallery, New York
1977 Bruce Dorfman, Barret House Gallery, Poughkeepsie, NY
1976 Recent Work, Nassau Community College, Firehouse Gallery, Garden City, NY
1975 Bruce Dorfman, Images Gallery, Toledo, Ohio
1972 Women, Kennedy Galleries, New York
1971 Gallery Jose Alegria, San Juan, Puerto Rico
1969 K Gallery, Woodstock, NY
1967 Female Images, Krasner Gallery, New York
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY
1966 Polari Gallery, Woodstock, NY
Roberts Gallery, Fort Lauderdale, FL
1964 Rudolph Galleries, Woodstock, NY and Coral Gables, FL
1962 Bruce Dorfman, The Norton Museum, West Palm Beach, FL
Roger Price Gallery, New York
1960 Two Explorers Gallery, New York
1955 University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

Selected Group Exhibitions
2018 The Masters: Art Students League Teachers and Their Students, Hirschl Adler Gallery, New York;
  511 Projects in Chelsea, New York; Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery, The Art  Students
  League of New York
Artistic Vanguard: The 1960s and the Art Students League coinciding with Carnegie Hall’s
  Music Festival The 60s: The Years that Changed America, Phyllis Harriman Mason Gallery,
  The Art Students League of New York
2017 Celebrating 30 Years, Gallery Artists: Drawings and Photographs, June Kelly Gallery, New York
2016 Ways and Means: A New Look at Process and Materials in Art, curated by Jason Andrew of
  Norte Maar, 1285 Avenue of the Americas Art Gallery, New York
Art New York, NYC; Elizabeth Clement Fine Art, Boston, MA
Art Miami/Wynwood, Miami, FL - Elizabeth Clement Fine Art, Boston, MA
2015 Escola International de Arte Loule: 1993-1998, Museum of Art and Cloisters, Loule, Portugal
Eye on UI: Bruce Dorfman, Stan Brodsky, Robert Kipness, Ellen Lanyon, in conjunction with the
  University of Iowa Museum of Art, The Figge Museum, Davenport, IA
2014 Making/Breaking Traditions: Teachers of Ai Weiwei: Bruce Dorfman, Richard Pousette-Dart, Knox
  Martin
, (with lineage mentors: Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Vaclav Vytlacil and Will Barnett); Phyllis
  Harriman Mason Gallery, The Art Students League of New York
2012 17 - Annual Selected Group, Zane Bennett Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
Annual Selected Group, Zane Bennett Gallery Santa Fe, NM
2011 Seeing Blue, University of Kentucky Museum of Art, Lexington
Color Speaks, Heather James Gallery, Jackson, WY
Color Speaks, Heather James Gallery, Palm Desert, CA.
2008 Summer Color, R. H. Ballard Gallery, Washington, VA
2007 Object of One’s Collection, organized by Broadhurst Gallery, Pinehurst, NC, Fayetteville
  Museum of Art, NC
2006-08 Highlights From the Permanent Collection, The Art Students League of New York;
  traveling exhibition
2006 Works on Paper, Kouros Gallery, New York
2004 Small Works II: Love, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, New York
2003 Process, Harvey Dinnerstein, Bruce Dorfman, Lorrie Goulet, organized and curated by
  Pamela N. Koob, The Art Students League of New York; catalogue
2002 Looking Forward, Kouros Gallery, New York
Small Works, Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York
Roseline Koener Gallery, Westhampton Beach, NY
2001 The Reece Galleries, New York
2000 Woodstock School of Art, Woodstock, NY
Intermission III, The Reece Galleries, New York
Skirball Museum, Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, CA
Terrain, Roseline Koener Gallery, Westhampton Beach, NY
1999-00 Intermission II, The Reece Galleries, New York
1999 Artists/Mentors, Denise Bibro Fine Art, New York
5, Bruce Dorfman, Judith Dolnick, Robert Natkin, Joel Perlman, Larry Poons, curated and
  organized by Jason, Andrew, Axis Gallery, NY; catalogue

Selected Public and Corporate Collections
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH
Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, PA
McNay Museum, San Antonio, TX
Museum of Art, University of Kentucky, Lexington
Samuel P. Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida, Gainesville
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC
The Bergen Museum of Art and Science, Paramus, NJ
The Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
The Skirball Museum, Los Angeles, CA
Museum of Art and Cloisters, Loulé, Portugal
Rice University, Sewall Gallery, Houston, TX
University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY
Rockefeller Foundation, New York
Woodstock Artists Association Museum, Woodstock, NY
The Art Students League of New York
The New School for Social Research, New York
Museum of Art and Cloisters, Loulé, Portugal
Collection Mourlot, Paris, France
Atlantic Richfield Corporation, Los Angeles, CA
Baer Bank, Geneva, Switzerland
Commerce Trust Company Foundation, Kansas City, MO
The Cook Company Foundation, Chicago, IL
Dart-Kraft Corporation, Chicago, IL
Searle Corporation, Chicago, IL
The Faber-Castell Corporation, Lakewood, NJ
American Embassy, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Government of Israel, Tel Aviv, Israel
Government of Monaco, Permanent Mission to the United Nations, New York

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