PRESS RELEASE
Abstraction: A Selection
Jun 23 – Jul 30, 2023
Sponder Gallery presents a selection of abstract works by artist Dan Christensen, Stanley Boxer, Natvar Bhavsar, Kikuo Saito, Jack Roth, Paul Jenkins, Ernest Trova, Doug Ohlson, Richmond Burton, and Larry Zox.
"We felt the moral crisis of a world in shambles, a world destroyed by a great depression and a fierce World War, and it was impossible at that time to paint the kind of paintings that we were doing—flowers, reclining nudes, and people playing the cello."
—Barnett Newman
Following the dominant Abstract Expressionist wave of post-WWII, which decried realism in favor of non-representational forms, the second generation Abstract Expressionists presented here pointed the way forward. Famously declaring that painting had exhausted its possibilities, the medium’s progression was pushed to a potential end in the late 1950s by influential critic Clement Greenberg. This second generation was determined to continue with less concern over expressions of inner angst like their predecessors. They acknowledged the innovation of Abstract Expressionism by employing methods such as all-over composition, the emphasis on the flatness of the canvas, and the bold use of color dips (drips?) and splashes.
Movements such as Hard-edge Painting, Colorfield Painting, and Lyrical Abstraction arose as a response not only to the previous generation, but to the aloof aesthetic nature of Minimalism and Conceptualism in the 1960s and 70s. The artists featured in this selection can be categorized under the umbrella of Lyrical Abstraction, which moved towards more sensuous and romantic abstractions that sought to reinvigorate a painterly tradition in American art. It is characterized by intuitive and loose paint handling as seen in the work of Natvar Bhavsar, who employs loose pigments in an aleatory fashion on his canvases, to staining processes, as seen in the smoky translucent canvases of Kikuo Saito. Less beholden to a progressive narrative of art, this second generation kept painting alive, and celebrates the allure of color and shape.