Thomas
Nozkowski & Robert
Mangold
Abstract artists challenge viewers with use of shape,
patterns
At the Michael Berger Gallery in Shadyside, the works of three
widely recognized artists prove that formalist issues in abstract art are
far from being foregone conclusions.
The main gallery features the work of Thomas
Nozkowski, a painter from New York City who manages to blow out the formalist
conventions of early modernist abstraction through the use of unconventional
shapes and an unusual palette
Fourteen works in total — six prints
and eight paintings — contain
odd shapes that appear to be organized so that we might follow Nozkowski's
deviations from their beginnings, as though making the works was a kind of
game in which a modification to the rules forced a change in everything that
had come before.
"It's like a Rorschach test for each individual viewer,"
says gallery owner Michael Berger. "It's
what you can see in that work and what it means to you."
Some works feature qualities reminiscent of preschool crayon
drawings, complete with rough linear patterns and looping lines. In one
print, a large checkered oval has become a figure with stick legs and
red and green balls for feet. In another, several looping
lines disrupt a brown and pale ochre background of rough lines, making room
for red shapes contained within the lines that mimic the loops. And in
a third, a checkered oval floats above a squiggled shape on a hatch-marked
background of muted green.
The smaller painted works have an undeniable
sweetness, some having textures and patterns suggestive of antique quilts
or faded wallpaper. Others feature more hard-edged shapes or lines that look
as though put together piecemeal, drawn or painted on as needed. In those
works, the shapes become the focal point, at times almost appearing as objects
in space that have no clear origin.
All of the works are untitled, allowing for no interruption
in interpretation. But even so, it is evident in each that Nozkowski has combined
the elementary with the unfamiliar to arrive at something accomplished and
strangely affective.
In a small room behind Nozkowski's works is an installation
of sorts titled "Object" by Gerald
Giamportone, a former Pittsburgher
who has lived in Los Angeles for the past 23 years.
Giamportone's work falls within the realm of minimalism,
favoring the sleekness found in the work of Donald Judd, but punching it up
with the inclusion of some sort of organic element.
In the all-white room, 13 identical plastic vials each hold
three stripped rose stems. Corked and capped at top and bottom with aluminum
grommets that also hold them to the wall, the units look sterile and clinical,
as if part of a scientific experiment. Yet they are surprisingly evocative,
as if in a sci-fi movie where organic matter is teleported to another dimension.
"It's a metaphor. It's a wonderful metaphor," Berger
says. "(The stems) will eventually wither away and turn to dust. Ashes
to ashes, dust to dust."
Downstairs can be found seven prints by Robert
Mangold, an artist who needs no introduction to those familiar with contemporary
art.
Mangold has been making paintings that share the concerns of
minimalist art since the mid-1960s. Using simple geometry, his paintings combine
basic shapes with a subtle use of color.
"He uses geometry, but he doesn't think that geometry
by itself is important," Berger says. "It's just a means to an end."
Basically linear forms of ovals and squares on top of solid
shapes in muted colors, the prints mimic Mangold's own paintings, which feature
the same rudimentary forms painted on shaped canvases that he joins together.
Although most of the prints are from 1995, one four-part
piece is from 2000 and hints at Mangold's stalwart hold on a visual vocabulary
that has no dimension of illusion or emotion, yet has come to represent the
singular and signature direction of an artist's oeuvre as it has subtly developed
over almost 40 years.
Mangold is just one of several well-known
artists whose work Berger has shown before. In fact, Berger has been dealing
in art since the 1960s, although for the most part privately.
This latest show is in his new public space — on
the edge of Shadyside at Penn Circle — which Berger and his wife,
Sherle, opened in May.
And although it might seem a little off the beaten path by those not familiar
with the area, it is worth venturing there to see works of this caliber.
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