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The exhibition titled Currents:
Paintings in Combined Media 2016-2018 -- complex colorful
abstract assemblages that pay no heed to conventional spatial
boundaries -- will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer
Street, on Friday, October 12. The exhibition will remain on
view through November 24. This is Bruce Dorfman’s second
exhibition at the gallery.
Dorfman has devised an abstract language of
his own that underlines his dual focus in creating a strong art
experience through geometric structure and intriguingly sensuous
luminosity.
Art writer, Phyllis Braff, says “Dorfman”
whose well-established exhibition history exceeds more than four
decades, “has long been interested in questioning what a painting
might be. He probes tangibility, for example, with forms that
straddle a line between recognition and no recognition.
Surfaces frequently integrate real elements, such as fabric folds, a
ruler, or a segment of product lettering but just as often a
three-dimensional unit is constructed from thickening pigment and
other studio materials” (The Courtesan Okichi, 2017).
Dorfman describes his paintings as composites
wherein his non-engagement with representational is pointedly
evident. Throughout his long career Dorfman has sought
cohesive tonal quality within the composition’s dominant color as
well as with colors of integrated forms affecting both soundness and
an energy of orderliness.
Dorfman’s layering and placement of
composition components suggest interrelated abstract translations
that speak of an original visual experience with contingent reality
that captures a sense of timelessness. With emphasis on
primary color applied to separate panels Dorfman treats each color
as an object – a thing in itself – imbued with its own special
quality that when integrated with other independent forms establish
the composition unity.
Dorfman’s innovative and captivating
structuring of rational space layers into additional visual planes
reflects his defiance of surface order while yet a physicality and
redefinition of space is achieved by his measured and carefully
weighted placement of independent forms in relationship one to the
other.
Dorfman continues to pursue ways to offer
potential for compelling art experiences. “ There is a kind of
informed intuition that I trust to drive my art,” he says.
“Great art is always recognized by some
ineffable confluence of exceptional craft embedded with the
spiritual investment of its maker. In Dorfman’s work, we find
both in abundance,” said the late C. L. Wysuph, art historian and
critic.
Dorfman lives and works in New York City.
He holds a B.A., degree from the University of Iowa. He has
participated in numerous one-person and group exhibitions throughout
the United States and Europe.
His paintings are represented in many museums,
corporate and private collections, including the Carnegie Museum of
Art, Pittsburgh; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; Skirball Museum,
Los Angeles, CA; Smithsonian Art Museum, Washington, DC;
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; The Art Students League of New
York; Rockefeller Foundation, New York; Museum of Art and Cloisters,
Portugal; and Collection Mourlot, Paris, France.
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