First Solo Exhibition in New York City
Vox Populi Gallery
Owner Colin DeLand renames the gallery
American Fine Arts Co. during the exhibition.
511 East 6th St., East Village, New York City
January 18- February 11, 1986
Sometime in autumn of 1985 I first came in contact with the gallerist Colin DeLand. He had come for a studio visit with another artist with whom I shared a Williamsburg loft space. On that day he saw in my studio a 7' x 7' Day-Glo orange monochrome painting I had made earlier that year, and without yet meeting him he left a message offering me an exhibition. During that period I had been making what I was calling "Political Abstraction". Paintings which used either a large monochromatic field of fluorescent paint, or a regular all- over distribution of fluorescent circles or dots arrayed on a similar field. This work was attempting to use an existing form to describe another completely different model. The point was to allow entry to one historical form, but quietly subvert it to another end. The form became a model for a political system.
Bright, repetitive, and endless, it invited entry, but offered no depth. I was unaware that a few other like-minded artists in the East Village were also doing the similar kinds of work. All of it seemed some sort of unconscious group response to the prevailing aesthetic at the time which was graffiti based, or cartoonish (Haring, Scharf). The work was characterized by it's hard edges, or geometric forms which seemed a response to painterly excess, and post-modernist references, that knowingly acknowledged the past as either ironic gesture, or a a set of forms open to re-interpretation. There also appeared a new kind of gallery that came to show this work (soon called Neo-Geo or Smart Art) and included many that were artist run such as Nature Morte (Peter Nagy), and Industrial With Monument (Meyer Vaisman), and American Fine Arts Co. (John Dogg)
Original invitation front (above), and back (below)
Original gallery statement (note the name of the gallery
is different on the invitation than appears on the statement).
Vox Populi Gallery
Owner Colin DeLand renames the gallery
American Fine Arts Co. during the exhibition.
511 East 6th St., East Village, New York City
January 18- February 11, 1986
Sometime in autumn of 1985 I first came in contact with the gallerist Colin DeLand. He had come for a studio visit with another artist with whom I shared a Williamsburg loft space. On that day he saw in my studio a 7' x 7' Day-Glo orange monochrome painting I had made earlier that year, and without yet meeting him he left a message offering me an exhibition. During that period I had been making what I was calling "Political Abstraction". Paintings which used either a large monochromatic field of fluorescent paint, or a regular all- over distribution of fluorescent circles or dots arrayed on a similar field. This work was attempting to use an existing form to describe another completely different model. The point was to allow entry to one historical form, but quietly subvert it to another end. The form became a model for a political system.
Bright, repetitive, and endless, it invited entry, but offered no depth. I was unaware that a few other like-minded artists in the East Village were also doing the similar kinds of work. All of it seemed some sort of unconscious group response to the prevailing aesthetic at the time which was graffiti based, or cartoonish (Haring, Scharf). The work was characterized by it's hard edges, or geometric forms which seemed a response to painterly excess, and post-modernist references, that knowingly acknowledged the past as either ironic gesture, or a a set of forms open to re-interpretation. There also appeared a new kind of gallery that came to show this work (soon called Neo-Geo or Smart Art) and included many that were artist run such as Nature Morte (Peter Nagy), and Industrial With Monument (Meyer Vaisman), and American Fine Arts Co. (John Dogg)
Original invitation front (above), and back (below)
Original gallery statement (note the name of the gallery
is different on the invitation than appears on the statement).
Installation View first exhibition American Fine Arts Co. ( Vox Populi)
Seen here Capital Project: Untitled (Love will Tear Us Apart)
Alkyd on canvas
2 panels each 84" x 84"
overall 84" x 168"
1986
Installation view
Capital Project: Untitled ( Happy Days)
Fluorescent alkyd on canvas
84" x 84"
1986
Capital Project: Untitled ( Smile)
Alkyd on canvas
84" x 84"
1986
Capital Project: Untitled ( Bright Future)
Fluorescent alkyd on canvas
84" x 84"
1986
Artist in 1986
Photograph Courtesy Betsy Bassett
Colin DeLand 1955-2002 (circa 1988)
Founder/Owner American Fine Arts Co.
Photograph by Dennis Balk