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James Graham and Sons presents Color Climax, a group invitational exhibition ... continuance of the conversation about color begun by the recent Color Chart.
J AMES G RAHAM & S ONS INCORPORATED

ESTABLISHED 1857

Color Climax june 26 – august 15, 2008 James Graham and Sons presents

Color Climax,

a group invitational exhibition

featuring exuberantly polychromed painting, sculpture, hybrid forms and painted installations executed by contemporary American artists. Conceived as a continuance of the conversation about show at the Museum of Modern Art,

color

begun by the recent Color Chart

Color Climax updates artistic

interaction with color.

If you remember, Color Chart examined a turn towards commercial color. The exhibition demonstrated the late Modernist reaction to the

for personal expression”. Color Chart

“Romantic quest

examined the use among artists of

standardized colors provided by commercially produced industrial paints within

structured regular formats. Color Chart was inspired by David Batchelor’s book from 2001,

Chromophobia

and its key phrase borrowed from Frank Stella:

“I

tried to keep the paint as good as it is in the can”. Color Climax

questions whether Color Chart, through its examples (in many cases)

of artworks that approximated regimented orderings of

color samples,

did

not, in fact, unwittingly become an illustration of the Batchelor book’s observation that Western Culture is afraid of

color:

it is too immoral,

unnamable, seductive, foreign, elusive.

Think:

In the decade following Frank Stella’s hard-edged colored paintings,

gestural marks from his own hand became an element in this work. Perhaps he found, through working with unmixed color, that the gesture did not automatically make reference to the artist’s emotional state. In fact, the hand of the artist was an agent in the

optical materiality

32 EAST 67th STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10065

(212) 535-5767

of painted color

FAX (212) 794-2454

!

Color Climax

associates working with

color

as

jouissance:

bliss and

communion with the other, desired object, but a pleasure close to death. George Bataille’s petit mort, or “little death” (his word for orgasm) applies. As does the death of the author: the subject enfolded and sublimated by

intensities. Color Climax

reveals artists using

color

color’s

crucially, as if in

the throes of sexual response, they tend to shed formalities. In Norman Bluhm‘s painting, floral and labial forms underline the sensuality of his electric pastels and silky wet paint. Sarah Braman also utilizes sexual metaphor in her mix of colliding or intertwined wedges that interlock drippily painted and hard plastic elements. Combining industrial paint with artist colors, Richmond Burton‘s knotted braid

motif nets a tesserae of geometric forms flanked by silver banks. James Hyde’s photographed spring fever of blossoms support roughly ruffled Day-Glo stepped interior rectangle. Judy Ledgerwood‘s painted foyer in porn hot pink is overlaid with her own paintings and decorative patterns. Liz Markus’ psychedelic rainbows disguise period silhouettes. Rebecca Morris’s darkish triangle debunks pictorial order as green and black gestures hustle the picture plane. Cordy Ryman’s painted relief combines painting and sculpture, here its ascending red & silver geometric trellis straddles a corner. Amy Sillman’s rectangle of variegated pastel hues depicts a coitus of brushy slaps. A contemporary of Norman Bluhm, the late Kimber Smith, in his work,

“Carnival’’

opposes loose washes of hue with limned spurts directly from

paint tubes. Dan Weiner imposes fluorescent color on antique ledger book. his raw color SHOCKS THE SYSTEM, while John Zinsser’s brush-headed swipes evokes the cold eroticism of Warhol. In all cases

Color Climax,

attempts to

evoke the most illicit pleasures available from all pigmented sources. See handout for film schedule.

Special thanks to Amy Sillman

!

James Graham & Sons is located at 32 East 67th Street. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 9:30 to 5:30. The gallery will close at 3:00pm each Friday in August (August 1, 8, 15). For more information, please call the gallery at 212-535-5767.