Openings

“Provoking Change,” UC San Diego, October 12 – December 7, 2017 by Robert Kushner

Robert Kushner, Big Blue Chador. Performed Extensively in Persian Line and Persian Line: Part II in the 1970s.

Robert Kushner, Big Blue Chador. Performed Extensively in Persian Line and Persian Line: Part II in the 1970s.

PROVOKING CHANGE
A Visual Arts Alumni Exhibition – UC San Diego 
Curated by Tatiana Sizonenko, Ph.D., ‘13 

October 12 – December 7, 2017
Reception, October 12, Thursday, 5:30 – 8:00 PM

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Thursday, 11:00 am – 4:00 PM,
Open Fridays by Appointment
Closed: November 28 

From the Press Release 

Exploring a segment of the unique early history of the Visual Arts Department at UC San Diego, Provoking Change celebrates an extraordinary roster of artists who came to study in San Diego in the early 1970s through the 1990s. Diverse in their approaches, these artists shared a desire to foster change by challenging the narrowly defined avant-garde canon as manifested in the formalism of the 1960s.

Works on view in Provoking Change include painting, sculpture, photography, photomontage, film and video, and text-and-image installations. Standing at the forefront of the Pattern and Decoration Movement, the work of Kim MacConnel and Robert Kushner challenged the conventional idea of painting as a two-dimensional work on canvas. Executed as a kind of cloth hanging, both MacConnel’s Turkish Delight and Kushner’s Big Blue Chador [pictured above] question the long-standing pejorative dismissal of decoration. 

Participating Artists: David Avalos, Becky Cohen, Joyce Cutler-Shaw, Brian Dick, Doris Bittar, Kip Fullbeck, Heidi Hardin, Robert Kushner, Fred Lonidier, Jean Lowe, Kim MacConnel, Susan Mogul, Allan Sekula, David Avalos/Louis Hock/Elizabeth Sisco (collective), David Avalos/Deborah Small (collective).

Read the full press release here.

Robert Kushner: Portraits & Perennials at DC Moore Gallery, February 9 – March 11 by Robert Kushner

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Please join me at DC Moore Gallery for the Opening of “Portraits & Perennials.”
Thursday, February 9th, 6:00-8:00 pm
The show continues through March 11, 2017

PRESS RELEASE 
DC Moore Gallery is pleased to present Robert Kushner: Portraits & Perennials. In this exhibition of new paintings and works on paper, Kushner extends the boundaries of his compositions, infusing his iconic, organic imagery with vibrant color and increased geometric precision in a lyrical synthesis of styles and techniques.

Underscoring the evocative title of the catalogue’s essay, “Do REAL Men Paint Flowers?,” the exhibition seeks to disrupt the narrative surrounding the decorative while exploring the importance of beauty in contemporary art. In paintings such as Bossa Nova (2015), Ahavah (2016), and Nasturtiums­–Hot Season (2016), Kushner’s defining grid-like backgrounds have grown increasingly pronounced, as he employs a bold, energized palette of brilliant pinks, purples, and yellows that imbue this body of work with new vigor. “…I began to consider how I could introduce a more raucous color sense, and increase of scale of the individual floral and foliate elements so that they might go spilling off the confines of the canvas,” the artist explains. 

These tensions between the figurative and the abstract, achieved through interplays of organic movement and geometric configurations, are in full evidence in works such as Spring Rain (2016) and the artist’s monumental Tenderness (2015). At times the work’s imagery, created with oil and acrylic paint with gold leaf, evokes Matisse’s botanical cutouts, while their bright, vertical bands of color uncannily call to mind the works of Barnett Newman and Ellsworth Kelly. Reflecting on these fluid interchanges, Kushner wittily muses in the exhibition’s catalogue: “So, are geometry and botany at peace? In dialogue? At each other’s throats? I would like to think that when I am done after working on it for weeks and sometimes months, there is an interesting and intentionally confusing juxtaposition between pure abstraction and linear form—that they each balance one another and create their own tightrope act.”

The accompanying catalogue to the exhibition highlights these new developments through a series of thought-provoking questions posed to the artist by notable individuals in fields ranging from the art historical and creative to the spiritual and culinary realms. These included curators and art critics, two museum directors, a poet, a rabbi, a restaurateur, and a diplomat. Their inquiries covered a wide spectrum of Kushner’s artistic concerns and brought new critical insights into the artist’s ongoing body of work.

Robert Kushner has exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum, in New York, and the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. His work is featured in public collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Tate Modern, London, England; and the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Publications on Kushner’s work include the monograph Gardens of Earthly Delight (Hudson Hills Press, 1997) with essays by Alexandra Anderson and Holland Cotter, and Wild Gardens by Michael Duncan (Pomegranate, 2006). In 2012, Kushner was the editor of an important volume of art criticism by Amy Goldin (1926-1978) titled Amy Goldin: Art in a Hairshirt (Hudson Hills).

Oxbow School Spring Visiting Artist Lecture Series: Robert Kushner by Robert Kushner

Robert Kushner
Tuesday, March 22, 7pm
Visiting Artist Lecture
Oxbow School, Napa, CA

Robert Kushner, Large Succulent Garden, 2014, oil and acrylic on joined paper, 54 3/4 x 33 1/2 inches

Robert Kushner, Large Succulent Garden, 2014, oil and acrylic on joined paper, 54 3/4 x 33 1/2 inches

Since participating in the early years of the Pattern and Decoration Movement in the 1970’s, Robert Kushner has continued to address controversial issues involving decoration. Kushner draws from a unique range of influences, and his work combines organic representational elements with abstracted geometric forms in a way that is both decorative and modernist. He has said, “Decoration, an abjectly pejorative dismissal for many, is a very big, somewhat defiant declaration for me . . . . The eye can wander, the mind think unencumbered through visual realms that are expansively and emotionally rich. Decoration has always had its own agenda, the sincere and unabashed offering of pleasure and solace.” On his collages specifically, Kushner writes: “I want to make [my pieces] as diffused and confusing as possible. I want the viewer to time travel as broadly as possible. And so I include papers from as many languages, cultures, times, and places as I can which become a part of the content of the work. In all likelihood no one individual could read all the languages in each collage. Instead of concrete cognition we arrive at a mist of unknowing.”

Kushner’s work has been exhibited extensively in the United States, Europe, and Japan and has been included three times in the Whitney Biennial and twice at the Biennale in Venice. He was the subject of solo exhibitions at both the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum. A mid-career retrospective of his work was organized by the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art. Kushner’s works are included in many prominent public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; National Gallery of Art, DC; Corcoran Gallery of Art, DC; Tate Gallery, London; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; Denver Art Museum; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence; J. Paul Getty Trust, Los Angeles; Museum Ludwig, St. Petersburg; and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Image: Robert Kushner, Large Succulent Garden, 2014, oil and acrylic on joined paper, 54 3/4 x 33 1/2 inches

Robert Kushner at Jerald Melberg Gallery, March 12 – April 23, 2016 by Robert Kushner

Robert Kushner, Johnny Jump Up I, 2014, collage, ink and acrylic, 10 x 10 inches

Robert Kushner, Johnny Jump Up I, 2014, collage, ink and acrylic, 10 x 10 inches

Please join Jerald Melberg Gallery for an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Robert Kushner. In this recent body of work, Kushner continues expanding the style he has worked in for decades: boldly colored, opulent paintings patterned with flowers and plant forms. The exhibition also includes a series of mixed media collages composed of elements from varied times and worldly locales, overlaid with minimalist flora forms.

Coffee & Conversation
with 
Robert Kushner
Saturday, March 12 at 11:00am

Jerald Melberg Gallery
625 South Sharon Amity Road
Charlotte, NC 28211
704.365.3000

Robert Kushner, Sungarden II, 2015, oil, acrylic, gold leaf on canvas, 30 x 60 inches

Robert Kushner, Sungarden II, 2015, oil, acrylic, gold leaf on canvas, 30 x 60 inches

Robert Kushner, Huntington Library Cactus Garden II, 2014, collage, ink, gold leaf and acrylic, 30 x 37 inches

Robert Kushner, Huntington Library Cactus Garden II, 2014, collage, ink, gold leaf and acrylic, 30 x 37 inches

Listen to Robert Kushner’s Gallery Talk at Jerald Melberg Gallery:

Robert Kushner selected for “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1, 2015 by Robert Kushner

Three works by Robert Kushner have been selected for “Greater New York” at MoMA PS1.
Robert Kushner’s Samba Class (1982)  featured in “Why ‘Greater New York Matters’ for the International Art World” by Ben Davis for Artnet News.

Robert Kushner, Torrid Dreams, 1984, acrylic, silk and cotton appliqué on cotton. Photo by Pablo Enriquez for MoMA PS1.

Robert Kushner, Torrid Dreams, 1984, acrylic, silk and cotton appliqué on cotton. Photo by Pablo Enriquez for MoMA PS1.

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Robert Kushner, Composition in Green and Pink, 1982, mylar and dotted Swiss reverse appliqué on printed cotton. Photo by Pablo Enriquez for MoMA PS1.

Robert Kushner, Composition in Green and Pink, 1982, mylar and dotted Swiss reverse appliqué on printed cotton. Photo by Pablo Enriquez for MoMA PS1.

Robert Kushner, Samba Class, 1982, acrylic on cotton with sequin and mylar reverse appliqué. Photo by Pablo Enriquez for MoMA PS1.

Robert Kushner, Samba Class, 1982, acrylic on cotton with sequin and mylar reverse appliqué. Photo by Pablo Enriquez for MoMA PS1.