gary KOMARIN
F IN D L AY
GALLERI ES
gary KOMARIN
what she said
F I N D L AY G A L L E R I E S
wa l ly f i n d l ay
∙
d av i d f i n d l ay j r
724 Fifth Avenue, 7 th & 8 th Floors, New York, New York 10019
212.421.5390 • [email protected]
165 Worth Avenue, Palm Beach, Florida 33480
561.655.2090 • [email protected]
www.findlaygalleries.com
what she said
We nonpractitioners come to painting looking for enjoyment; the painter himself has more complicated motives and more pressing
demands. But then we find that our enjoyment depends in some degree on putting ourselves in the artist’s place, and when that
happens, the nature of our pleasure in the painting changes, becomes more complex and critical. Perhaps the painter goes through
a process that mirrors this: At a certain point he steps back, and begins to see what he’s done with the eye of another, of someone
who has not gone through the long process of decisions and doubts, acts and revisions that have shown how to reach this point—of
someone with a more innocent eye. It’s only at that point that the painting is finished.
Gary Komarin’s paintings are the result of a process whose outcome was at the beginning unforeseen. Yet I doubt much is up
to chance. He’s undertaken this process many times, and each time he’s done it, he’s added something to his understanding of its
potential. Yet there is always room for surprise. In fact, understanding the painting process means nothing else than understanding
how to elicit the hidden possibilities that can excite you. This is true even or perhaps especially when the paintings are at what might
seem their simplest, and when what’s most noticeable about them at first is their use of repetition.
The most obvious of the recurring images in Komarin’s work is the “cake” motif that he has used often over the years—sometimes
(as here in Cake Stacked, Cornflower Blue on Crème) accompanied by the inscription, cake, possibly just in case the viewer was
unsure what in the world this was. And rightly so. It’s only nominally a cake, after all. If the artist had called it a ziggurat, I’d accept it
as such just as well. Baked goods are domestic fare, in art-historical terms the stuff of still life; ancient Mesopotamian temples with
receding terraced structures are monumental, bespeaking issues of power, time, and history; paintings of these could be classified
as “historic landscape”—the French Academy instituted a prize for this hybrid genre in 1817. Because Komarin’s paintings refer to
their own internal imaginative scale rather than referring to actually existing objects, he can let them be monumental or intimate as
they will.
Regarded thus, in cognizance of abstraction, what’s most important about this stacked motif is the way it functions as an armature
for the act of painting. Josef Albers didn’t really have much to say about squares, but he appreciated them for the magic they allowed
him to work with color. And as the title Cake Stacked, Cornflower Blue on Crème suggests, for Komarin too, color is entirely to
the point. The “cake” is a stable form, and the linear treatment of a legible image—along with the atmospheric treatment of the
off-white surround—allows for a different kind of balance between the painting’s two colors than if they were used in purely
abstract forms such as Albers’ squares or Mark Rothko’s more nebulous hovering color fields: The blue, quantitatively less than
the surrounding crème, dominates and even, so to speak, invades it, whereas in another recent treatment of the same motif, Cake,
Stacked Red on Cream, there is a taut equilibrium between the red cake and its atmospheric environs; in Cake Stacked Orange on
Purple, the purple ground dominates, almost sucking the orange form into its own dense ether.
In real life, a cake might be death-by-chocolate or angel cake, hazelnut or lemon. Knowing that it’s cake doesn’t really say so much
about what it will be like to eat it. Likewise, each of these painted cakes has its own flavor, its own feeling. One is delicate, another
imposing, still the third is tough but moody. There is no repetition beyond the name and the highly variable pictogram to which it
is attached.
That in itself might have been enough variety for some artists. Komarin’s paintings are usually more complicated than this—although
he makes the complication look easy. For one thing, in contrast to the cake paintings, most of Komarin’s works deliberately sidestep
any sense of compositional stability. Things float, drift, seep; they shake, rattle, and roll. In Incident at Echo Lake, for instance,
various more or less tangible, more or less nebulous entities seem to be encroaching on the orangeish-brown field that dominates
the horizontal rectangle—entering from the edges and only tentatively approaching its center. One’s first impression is that the hazy
ocher field is, so to speak, passively accepting the intrusion of the more intricate assemblies of marks pushing in from the left and
top, or even the simpler looping outline emerging from the bottom of the canvas. But no—one quickly realizes—the apparently
indefinite field is actually a force field of restless energies; roiling with internal differences, it is actively pushing back against the
encroaching shapes and might just as easily be seen as slowly but surely ejecting them: pushing them out to the edges rather than
suffering their trespass. This active ambiguity is what part of what keeps the painting perpetually lively in the eye of the beholder.
It’s interesting to see how many variations Komarin can play on this theme of the dialectic of periphery and center in paintings
such as Loosha in Blue, Rue Madame in Red, and Big Pink, Lily Pond Lane, to name a few. What’s consistent among them is that in
working with the edges of the rectangle, he never emphasizes or re-marks it. That is, the edge never actually sets up a boundary or
border. Marks and images seem to swim in and out of it according to unpredictable and indefinable inner and outer forces. More
than that, one can see the edges themselves as in movement, like the edges of the frame defined by the lens of a movie camera as
it pans across the surface of a pond. (I use the example of a pond advisedly: I feel sure that Monet with his pond full of water lilies
is a significant precursor to Komarin’s very different art.)
What’s happening in these paintings? Something, but you can’t exactly name it. In order to best enjoy them, it’s important to let
uncertainty become part of your viewing process. I’m sure it must be part of Komarin’s painting process. Or if not uncertainty,
then at least, let’s say, a kind of laissez-faire. His intention is not to impose himself on or through his paintings but rather to let them
go their own way. He’s put it beautifully: “My paintings travel on their own roads in many ways. I am there to assist and to guide.”
That metaphor of the road speaks to me in a very personal way right now. I’m writing this from a mountainous island filled
with winding roads whose twists and turns over steep and scary precipices can make you dizzy. The strangest part is that every
meandering road looks just like every other, and yet at the same time, each time you drive over the same road, it somehow looks
different. Luckily, every road eventually ends up at a beautiful beach, even if it’s not the one you thought you were getting to. I
suspect this almost hallucinatory entanglement of sameness and difference—not to mention the feeling that a wrong turn could lead
over a cliff, but that if you can avoid a tumble, there is a beautiful experience to be had as a reward—is something that Komarin has
experienced as he’s time and again guided his art along its mercurial paths.
— Barry Schwabsky
[ Barry Schwabsky is an art critic for The Nation and coeditor of international reviews for Artforum. ]
the philosophy that
intention is but a
small fragment of
our consciousness,
that painting should
be more about
experience than a
statement of intent.
—Mason Klein, New York
“
“
Komarin embraces
T he Ge o metry o f Lo ve | 84 x 60 inches | F G© 137534
D irty W hi te Arrez o | 78 x 66 inches | F G© 137530
T h e Ca re take r ’s C o tta g e | 72 x 60 inches | F G© 137526
S h e D o n ’t G e t the Bl ues i n the Blu e R oom | 68 x 60 inches | F G© 137520
D i r t y Whi te, Wi th F re nch Wig | 72 x 72 inches | F G© 137528
A S ui t e o f Bl ue Se a , Bo g ot a | 28 x 22 inches | F G© 137176
I n the F rench H o te l | 72 x 48 inches | F G© 137523
G o o d l y D ra wn i n Gree n w i th Pin k | 48 x 50 inches | F G© 137516
Wi d e Water | 80 x 90 inches | F G© 137532
T h e D i s a p p o i nted Mi stress No. 9 | 84 x 60 inches | F G© 137533
D i r t y W h i t e wi th Le mo ng rass Green | 20 x 16 inches | F G© 137117
Bi g P i nk, Li l y P o nd La n e | 72 x 48 inches | F G© 137522
R u e M a d ame i n Red N o . 9 | 72 x 60 inches | F G© 137527
Be t w e e n Bl u e a nd Yo u and T hen Some | 45 x 47 inches | F G© 137536
D o n’t Te l l Li z z i e Bo rd en | 40 x 60 inches | F G© 137515
Ki t Mand o r | 76 x 66 inches | F G© 137529
Ip so F a c to | 80 x 68 inches | F G© 137535
A S u i t e o f Bl ue Se a , Ib i s Islan d | 54 x 48 inches | F G© 137518
Ca ke S t a c k e d , C o rnfl o w er Bl ue o n Crème | 50 x 74
1 /2
inches | F G© 13 7201
C a k e S t a c ke d , Re d o n C rea m | 25 x 18
1 /2
inches | F G© 137172
gary KOMARIN
b. new york, 1951
Born in New York City, the son of a Czech
architect and Viennese writer, Gary Komarin
is a risk taker in contemporary painterly
abstraction.
Komarin’s stalwart images have an epic quality
that grip the viewer with the idea that he or
she is looking at a contemporary description of
something timeless. For painter Gary Komarin,
abstraction has never been a formal dead
end. Rather, it has allowed him to challenge
the limitations of the style–to make painting
‘include more’ precisely because a recognizable
image excludes too much. Komarin has been
called a “painter’s painter.” His status in this
regard is based on the authenticity of his work,
its deep connection to the tradition of modern
painting as well as its sustained individuality as
an utterly personal voice.
Extending the direction of the New York
School painters
Like many of the best artists of his generation,
he is indebted to the New York School,
especially his mentor Philip Guston with whom
he studied at Boston University where he was
awarded a Graduate Teaching Fellowship.
Komarin has been particularly successful at
filtering these influences throughout his own
potent iconography.
Contemporary American Painter skips
traditional painting media and materials
for a latex hybrid mix
Guston’s influence is evident in Komarin’s
merger of drawing and painting, often breaking
the picture plane of his rich and elegantly
composed color fields with an assortment
of private iconic cake and vessel-like objects.
Preferring non-art industrial canvas tarps and
drop cloths, Komarin eschews traditional
painting media and materials. He builds layered
surfaces with latex house paint in a thinned out
sluice mixed with spackle and water. The house
paint offers hybrid colors that seem slightly
‘off ’ and the spackle creates a beautifully matte
surface. Using color energetically, the quickdrying materials allow him to paint with a sense
of urgency, which mirrors the tension created
by conflicting renderings of the spontaneous
and the deliberate. The conscious and the
unconscious or the strange and familiar. The
resulting image is one that appears familiar but
resists recognition.
LIS T O F WORKS I N E X H I BI T I ON
AL L WO R KS : MI X E D ME D I A O N C AN VAS
The Geometry of Love
84 x 60 in. | 137534
Dirty White Arrezo
78 x 66 in. | 137530
The Caretaker’s Cottage
72 x 60 in. | 137526
She Don’t Get the
Blues in The Blue Room
60 x 68 in. | 137520
Dirty White, With French Wig
84 x 60 in. | 137528
A Suite of Blue Sea, Bogota
28 x 22 in. | 137176
In the French Hotel
72 x 48 in. | 137523
Goodly Drawn in
Green with Pink
48 x 50 in. | 137516
Wide Water
80 x 90 in. | 137532
The Disappointed
Mistress No. 9
84 x 60 in. | 137533
Dirty White with
Lemongrass Green
20 x 16 in. | 137177
Big Pink, Lily Pond Lane
72 x 48 in. | 137522
Rue Madame in Red No. 9
72 x 60 in. | 137527
Between Blue and
You and Then Some
45 x 47 in. | 137536
Don’t Tell Lizzie Borden
40 x 60 in. | 137515
Kit Mandor
76 x 66 in. | 137529
Ipso Facto
80 x 68 in. | 137535
A Suite of Blue Sea,
Ibis Island
54 x 48 in. | 137518
Cake Stacked,
Cornflower Blue on Crème
50 x 74 1/2 in. | 137201
Cake Stacked,
Red on Cream
25 x 18 1/2 in. | 137172
Farmer’s Logic, Arrezo
52 x 48 in. | 137517
Who is Hercules and Why Are
You Calling Him?
28 x 22 in. | 137174
Two Pair in Pink
60 x 48 in. | 137197
Incident at Echo Lake
60 x 68 in. | 137198
Yarrow
72 x 48 in. | 137524
Cake Stacked,
Orange on Purple
27 x 14 in. | 137173
A Wilder Blue
60 x 69 in. | 137574
Rue Madame in Red No. 14
72 x 60 in. | 137573
The Spanish Bride
44 x 38 in. | 137171
Loosha in Blue
64 x 61 in. | 137199
gary KOMARIN
2016
SO L O E X H I B I TI O NS
What She Said, Findlay Galleries, New York, NY
The First Green Rushing, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
Mr. Blond, Robischon Gallery, Denver, CO
2015 A Wilder Blue, Mark Borghii Gallery, Bridgehampton, NY
Don’t Tell Lizzie Borden, Gallerie Design -e- Space, Paris, France
Incident at Osboiurne Grove, Gallerie Baobob, Bogota, Columbia
East Meets West, Gallery 88, Seoul Korea
New Paintings and Works on Paper, Madelyn Jordan Gallery, NY
2014 Gary Komarin, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
Gary Komarin Part II, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
From 24 Vessels at Kit Mandor, Musee
D’Art Classique de Mougins, France
Farmhouse Logic, Morrison Gallery, Kent, CT
Durango, Mini Gallery, Assisi, Italy
Michael Dunev Project, Costa Brava, Spain
The Road So Bare and White, Cuadro Gallery, Dubai
Art Trail, Seoul, Korea
2009 Spanierman Modern, New York, NY
Gallerie Proarta, Zurich, Switzerland
Angus Broadbent Gallery, London, England
2008 Blue Scrubbed White, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
Kiyoharu Museum, Kiyoharu, Japan
The Fine Art Society, London, England
2007
Gary Komarin, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
Spanierman Modern, New York, NY
The Goss Gallery, Dallas, TX
2006
Incident at Echo Lake, Karolyn Sherwood Gallery, Des Moines, IA
Galerie ProArta, Zürich, Switzerland
SG Modern and Contemporary Fine Arts, NY
The Bourdon Gauge, The Fine Art Society, London, England
2005 Donna Tribby Fine Arts, Palm Beach, FL
2013 Jack’s Bridge, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
In Which the Baron Fallow, Vigo Gallery, London, England
Annual Galleries, Solo Exhibition, Paris, France
Galerie Proarta, Arp, Motherwell, Komarin and Heilman,
Zurich, Switzerland
Elins Eagles Smith Gallery, Tapping Reeve, San Francisco, CA
The Road so Bare and White, Gremillion
and Co. Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Cuadro Gallery, The Early Influences, Dubai
Lotte Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Seoul, Korea
2012 Hillsboro Gallery of FineArt, Dublin, Ireland States of Feeling:
Gary Komarin, Robert Motherwell and Larry Poons
Robischon Gallery, Denver, CO
Down and Dirty Whites, Bonbright Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2011 Gary Komarin, Gail Severn Gallery, Ketchum, ID
2010 Cuadro Gallery, Dubai, UAE
2004 Karolyn Sherwood Gallery, Des Moines, IA
Bentley Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
Gerald Peters Gallery, Dallas, TX
Mira Godard Gallery, Toronto, Canada
Hamiltons Gallery, London, England
Galerie ProArta, Zürich, Switzerland
Broadbent Gallery, London, England
2003 McGrath Gallery, New York, NY
Kraft Leiberman Gallery, Chicago, IL
Robischon Gallery, Denver, CO
Kunstart Zürich, Galerie ProArta, Zürich, Switzerland
Galerie ProArta, Zug, Switzerland
2002 Gremillion & Company Fine Arts, Houston, TX
Peyton/Wright Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
Galerie ProArta, Zürich, Switzerland
Lizan Tops Gallery, East Hampton, NY
Steven Vail Gallery, Des Moines, IA
Ballard Featherston Gallery, Seattle, WA
1984 Joy Horwich Gallery, Chicago, IL
Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2001 The Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA
MOFA, New Orleans, LA
Vanier Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
Gremillion & Company Fine Arts, Houston, TX
1983 Meadows Museum of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas,
TX
Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY
Meredith & Long Gallery, Houston, TX
2000 Peyton/Wright, New York, NY
Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta GA
Gremillion & Company Fine Arts, Houston, TX
1999 Aurobora Press, San Francisco, CA
1998 MOFA, New Orleans, LA
CS Schulte Gallery, NJ
1997
1996
Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA
Mark Miller, East Hampton, NY
Drew University, Madison, NJ
1982 University of Texas - Irving, Irving, TX
Meredith Long and Company, Houston, TX
1981 Museum of Art, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR
Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY
Hobart and William Smith Colleges Art Gallery,
New York NY
William Campbell Gallery, Fort Worth, TX
1979 Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY
1995 Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Arthur Roger Gallery, New Orleans, LA
1994 1992 1991 1990 Herbert Palmer Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Klarfeld Perry Gallery, New York, NY
Grace Hokin Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
Scott Hanson Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1989 Brian Reddy, Little Silver, NJ
Bruce Helander Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
Sandler Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Scott Hanson Gallery, New York, NY
1988 Princeton University Gallery, Princeton, NJ
1987 Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York, NY
Sandler/Hudson Gallery, Atlanta, GA
Meredith Long & Company, Houston, TX
Bruce Helander Gallery, Palm Beach, FL
Meredith & Long Gallery, Houston, TX
museums
The Musee Kiyoharu, Japan
The Musee Mougins, Mougins, France
Arkansas Museum of Contemporary
Art, Little Rock, AK
Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi, TX
Boise Art Museum, Boise, ID
Boston University Art Museum, Boston, MA
Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO
Jersey City Museum, Jersey City, NJ
Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ
Morris Museum, Morristown, NJ
Museum of Fine Arts, Corpus Christi, TX
Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX
Newark Museum, Newark, NJ
Noyes Museum, Oceanville, NJ
Zimmerli Museum, New Hyde Park, NY
awards
JOAN MITCHELL
PRIZE IN PAINTING
THE EDWARD ALBEE
FOUNDATION FELLOWSHIP
IN PAINTING, NEW YORK
THE NEW YORK
FOUNDATION FOR THE
ARTS GRANT IN PAINTING
THE BENJAMIN ALTMAN
PRIZE IN PAINTING, NEW
YORK
THE ELIZABETH
FOUNDATION FOR THE
ARTS GRANT IN PAINTING
BOSTON UNIVERSITY
GRADUATE TEACHING
FELLOWSHIP IN PAINTING
F I N D L AY G A L L E R I E S
For further information and pricing of
these artworks please contact the gallery:
New York
212.421.5390 | 212.486.7660
[email protected]
724 Fifth Avenue, 7 th & 8 th Floors
New York, New York | 10019
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday | Saturday: 10 am | 6 pm
Palm Beach
561.655.2090
[email protected]
165 Worth Avenue
Palm Beach, Florida | 33480
Gallery Hours:
Monday | Saturday: 10 am | 6 pm
F I N D L AY G A L L E R I E S
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