Scott White Contemporary, La Jolla Exhibits Group Show with Well Known Mid-Century Painters Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski and more….

Scott White Contemporary, La Jolla

Color & Form

Review by Cathy Breslaw
www.artfullifebycathy.blogspot.com   
www.cathybreslaw.com

‘Color and Form’ is a group exhibition of well known artists, Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Friedel Dzubas and Thomas Downing. Known as a color field painter, Dzubas’s paintings “Nouveau” and “Stone Flower”, are oil paintings reflecting the simplified abstracted shapes in blues, beiges and yellow/oranges resembling landscapes.  Larry Poon’s “Untitled” acrylic on canvas reflects his expressionistic style with its subtle color palette of ranges of white, blue, red, and beige in energetic vertical brushstroke patterns.  Kenneth Nolands three paintings in the show – “Mysteries Aglow”, “Dusk Affair” and “Via Fill”, are each representative of one of the major types of paintings Noland did that were categorized as stripes, targets(bulls eye circles) and shaped canvases.  These works which were painted between 1968 and 2002  are subtle in their hues and contemplative in their overall feel.   Jules Olitski’s “Third Caliph” and “Monday Night Mark”, both painted in 1965, are acrylics on canvas, representative of  color field painting and seemingly painted by spraying layers of color subtly blending one with the next of dark yet vibrant purples, blues, yellows and reds. Thomas Downing who is known as the pioneer of the “dot” in painting, and spent most of his career painting various patterns of them, expresses this concept in “Reel”, an acrylic on canvas with a color palette of red, white and blue.  There is one sculpture in this exhibition that though it was created in 2013 by Joey Vaiasuso, “Untitled”, fits like a glove into this mid-century modernist group of artists’ exhibition. Tomato red planks of powder coated steel in varying lengths in a structural arrangement, create a thoughtful counterpoint to this exhibition of painters.