Kenneth Noland

Chac Mool Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of Paintings by the inter-nationally acclaimed artist, Kenneth Noland. The exhibition opens Thursday, May 22 and runs through July 12, 2003. The artist will be present at the opening on Thursday evening from 6:00-9:00 in the evening.

In his long and distinguished career, Kenneth Noland has become recognized as one of the finest masters of color after Matisse. His "Target Paintings," iconic signs for some, simple, articulate frameworks for exploration of color relationships for the artist, draw viewers into and to them, because experiencing art "tends to be a floating experience. It’s as if you lose your sense of gravity." Beyond the "Targets" being concentric bands of color set within a square space, they contradict and yet define what Clement Greenberg called "post painterly abstraction" in that the seemingly flat clarity of these paintings correspondingly merge color areas with the canvas ground. No clean contours, no minimalist ironies are evident. And color is both the object of the work and consequently, its subject.

If the early paintings focused on clear and primary colors, Noland’s color experimentation has progressed toward pearlescence, iridescent metallic and holography pigments as well as a kind of collage which allows the application of color both beneath and above before affixing it to the canvas. In Mysteries: Platinum (acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches), the silvery platinum square seemingly blends in with the concentric circles of silver, dark gray and black, except for the rosy haze which emerges in the left corner and corresponds with the bluish tones in the lower right, both of which harmonize with the delicate pink circles that halos the black. A blurred and yet intense gray horizontal line cuts through the entire square. Asserting that rectangularity, strong intense lozenge-like elements appear, in blue at the upper right, a deeper blue "x" or cross at the lower left, and an orange-red and a green float in the almost white center of the target itself.

Noland’s paintings shimmer and vibrate, underscoring the often-voiced comparison between them to musical harmonies and rhythms. They exemplify synesthaesia, that rare combination which results in a multiple sensory awakening.

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Kenneth Noland