Noguchi's Okinawa Woodpecker, 1976 Mixed media on aluminum, 99 x 126 inches (251.5 x 320 cm) Frank Stella A Breakthrough in Abastraction - Exotic Birds Gagosian Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of Frank Stella's "Exotic Birds" paintings. The exhibition includes a selection of monumental metal reliefs from this groundbreaking series. Initiated in 1976, Stella's "Exotic Birds" presented a radical break from the reductive vocabulary of his earlier, geometric compositions, ushering in a profoundly new expansiveness and freedom in his work that challenged previously accepted notions of abstract, modernist painting. In works such as "New Caledonian Lorikeet," "Noguchi's Okinawa Woodpecker" and "Wake Island Rail," all from 1976, Stella employs the engineer’s tools of irregular curves as pictorial elements, drawn with gestural bravado and painterly expression arranged in jigsaw-like patterns of interlocking forms on an essentially rectangular ground. Though seemingly improvisational in spirit, the "Exotic Birds" emerged from a decidedly methodical process, beginning with a series of graph-paper drawings that the artist translated into foamcore maquettes and then enlarged into the painted honeycomb aluminum reliefs that are the "Exotic Birds". Exhibition: April 16 - August 27, 2004 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 10 am - 6 pm Gagosian Gallery 980 Madison Avenue USA-New York NY 10021 Telephone +1 212 744 2313 Fax +1 212 772 7962 Email info@gagosian.com www.gagosian.com |
|
 |
