(An Appropriate Distance) From the Mayor’s Doorstep
By Piri Halasz, April 1, 2018
A singularly inventive group show at FreedmanArt is “Colors” (through May 12). The idea for it was born when the gallery’s director, Ann Freedman, visited the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA last year, to see its exhibition devoted to Sam Kootz, the pioneering art dealer who early on represented Adolph Gottlieb, Motherwell & Hofmann, among others. While Freedman was there, her attention was drawn to a poem entitled “Colors” by a 12-year-old schoolgirl named Zoe Kusyk that had been inspired by a 1977 Larry Poons painting at the Fralin. The poem had won first prize in the annual competition inspired by the museum for works of prose or poetry inspired by works in the museum’s collection. The poem itemizes different colors but perfectly captures the way they all run together in the Poons painting and tells how the disparate but very human stories they tell also become one in the end.