Jules Olitski: Plexiglas, 1986

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to present Jules Olitski: Plexiglas, 1986, at 293 10th Avenue, from January 28 – February 27, 2016. The exhibition highlights Olitski’s lesser-known acrylic and enamel paintings on Plexiglas— all from the year 1986—in the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery.

One of the original Color Field painters to emerge in the 1950s, Jules Olitski is known for his experimentation with new materials and techniques in painting. He rarely used a paintbrush, instead he utilized objects such as spray guns, painter’s mitts, brooms and squeegees. In 1986, at the age of 64, he pushed the boundaries once again by embracing the industrial over the natural with the use of Plexiglas in lieu canvas. A departure from his earlier paintings, these works exemplify Olitski’s play with dimensionality. Using Plexiglas allowed him to create unique foundations on which he could build varying textures and levels of translucence – the results of which evoke a broad range of natural imagery from ethereal nebulae, to earthly marine-life.

This medium afforded Olitski the ability to experiment with endless contours, combining bold linear shapes with subtle irregularities. In OG Challenge-Two, 1986 (pictured above), he creates a more graphic design by collaging two irregular pieces of Plexiglas upon which he applied hefts of pearlized pigments laced with thin reliefs of black spray paint. “They strike one as both galactic and geological, trippy transmissions that could have been sent from either deep sea or space,” writes essayist Margaret Graham. “Silent Pass (1986), for example, reads as a luminous lunar landscape painted on a leaning rhombus whose top two corners have been unevenly shorn. It is a battlefield viewed from above, craters and strokes whipped up in explosions of arctic blue, dusty lilac, and mint green.”
Paul Kasmin Gallery is proud to present a solo booth dedicated to Jules Olitski at the ADAA: Art Show in March 2016. The presentation spans over 50 years and examines seven different bodies of work, ranging from the Matter paintings of the 1950’s to his Late paintings of the early 2000s.

ABOUT JULES OLITSKI: (b. 1922 in Russia, d. 2007)
Jules Olitski was an abstract painter, printmaker and sculptor and an important figure in the Color Field movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s. His work is represented in many major permanent and public collections, including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Tate Modern, London, England; The Art Gallery of Ontario; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA; The Chicago Art Institute, Chicago IL; The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

In 2015, his work was included in MOCA Jacksonville’s WHITE and the Dallas Museum of Art’s Bold Abstractions: Selections from the DMA Collection 1966 – 1976. His work is also currently included in the Nelson Atkins Museum’s exhibition Make Room for Colorfield on view through November 27, 2016.