The
June Kelly Gallery is pleased to present Sarah Plimpton: New
Paintings, an exhibition of work that reflects her unyielding
interest in the pictorial mystery between space and form. The
exhibition will open on April 18 and will remain on view through
June 4.
Plimpton no longer allows black to recede into the background or
depth, writes Bruce Lawder. Rather she thrusts it right up to
the picture plane, equal to whatever else we find there. Space
moved up like this necessarily flattens the work, making it more
suggestive of a wall. Then, if a wall, similar to wall
painting, one can find isolated marks. Plimpton says "These
are marks on a black world. Marks on the night. But these new
paintings also show a transition to a world divided between night
and day. Black and white. Small windows to another world of
color appear here and there. Balance and compression, lines of
color bring space out and make it present."
In this
new body of work, Plimpton never complicates pictorial space; she
presents an expansiveness and expressiveness, both complex and
ambiguous. By restricting the paintings to black, white with
meandering lines in red, green and blue, she ensues an energy with a
spirit liveliness, reflecting verve and gravitas. Conviction
to precise, distinct, freehand marks convey sense of the artist's
presence with mastering scale and effecting intuited allure with the
act of painting.
There
is intrigue with Plimpton's improvisation ... as in Black Time.
The sense of solidity with architecture concurrent with evocation of
flight engenders the sense of elation. Memories of places, of
things, that can't be assigned exactness are intuitable.
Plimpton's painting while rooted in abstraction is populated with
figurative and gestural marks, touted by some, as true reciprocity
between abstraction and image. She employs formal elements of
painting - color, line, shape, and texture establishing
inter-connectedness of the work's inner energy and concrete visual
perception satisfying the joy of looking.
Plimpton, who is a poet as well as a painter, is a native of New
York City. She received a bachelor’s degree from Smith College
in Northampton, Massachusetts, and attended Harvard Medical School
before moving to Paris, where she lived for 19 years. She also
studied at Pratt Graphics Center in New York.
Her
work has been shown in exhibitions in New York, Paris and Zurich.
She is represented in many important public and private collections,
including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American
Art, Heckscher Museum, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers
University, Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscript Library,
The Harris Collection at Brown University, New York Public Library
and the Library of Congress.
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