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2/10/2001

Kenneth Noland: New Circles

Bernard Jacobson Gallery, London

First major exhibition in London for 20 years. Bernard Jacobson Gallery

"It is neither an overstatement nor an over simplification to say that his recent Circle pictures are like a diary of everything Noland has discovered in his lifetime" (critic Karen Wilkin).

Kenneth Noland is a pioneer of modern American painting. While retaining some of the values of Abstract Expressionism Noland attempted a new kind of painting dealing purely with the aesthetic issues of abstraction. Using a pared down technique, acrylic paint staining bare canvas, the whole painting - form, colour, canvas and stretcher - became a unit.

Concerned with making apparent the fact of the painting itself without outside references he used symmetrical compositions where the shapes on the canvas refered to or were constrained by the shape of the canvas. The early paintings were concentric circles of different colours usually with a painterly flare on the outer edge. Subsequently Noland used massively extended rectangles, chevrons, flared and surfboard shapes.

For the new paintings Noland has returned to a format which he first used in the early sixties, the circle in the square. These New Circles are, however, different to the earlier ones, the surface slickly painted, the colours vibrant but synthetic. They seem high-tech and almost forbidding in contrast to the inviting matt surfaces and warm colour of the earlier work.
For Noland the texture of colours has become more and more important. Not scared of making a beautiful painting, he has honed his skills to emphasise the sensuous qualities of paint and colour. Sometimes metallic and dichromatic plastic paints give the works optical effects.

The influence of Noland can be clearly seen in the work of younger artists from Frank Stella to Damien Hirst. Noland is represented in most major museum collections throughout the world including the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Tate Gallery, London.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with a text by Matthew Collings.

For further information and visuals please contact Theresa Simon t 020 7731 3979

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