FreedmanArt opens an exhibition of new paintings by Kit White

ArtDaily

April 23 2019

NEW YORK, NY.- FreedmanArt is presenting Walls and Occupied Spaces, new paintings by Kit White, opening April 16, 2019. The spaces in these paintings exist as metaphorical landscapes occupied by linear structures derived from both the organic and inorganic. Kit White's new work incorporates photographic images into his paintings as poignant backdrops to abstract lines. The photograph provides a material, worldly context for the drawing, which, though abstract, represents the real as an analog mark. This new series of works seek out images of land that have been scarred by conflict. Initially, the images were of contested spaces of what we have traditionally referred to as the Middle East, places where competing claims to land have led to war-like confrontations. Conflicts of all kinds, violent and non-violent, surround us and announce themselves through walls, barriers, and borders. These collisions, not always physical, are manifestations of the fraught politics of occupation, both actual and symbolic. The artist also found himself drawn to the photographs of Matthew Brady (1822 - 1896) and others of the Civil War, and meditating on the figurative wall born of that conflict, a psychological division that continues to separate us. view as [pdf]

Kit White

Kit White

Kit White Artist Statement: Walls and Occupied Spaces

March 2019

Over the years, I have approached the space of my paintings as metaphorical landscapes. They have horizons and are occupied by linear elements that act as surrogates for structures both organic and inorganic. But because paintings are wholly created spaces, the parameters by which they are judged are formal in nature. All content reaches the viewer through a formal lens. Yet, it is the other lens, the photographic lens, through which we now receive most of our knowledge of the world and contextualizes most of what we know of it. (download PDF to read full statement)

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Kit White

Kit White

Exhibition explores the transformation of common objects

ART DAILY

October 23, 2018

NEW YORK, NY. - FreedmanArt is presenting an exhibition that explores the transformation of common objects. "Hiding in Plain Sight celebrates the artist's power to transform the ordinary. As revision becomes visionary, art becomes revelatory, and we begin to see common objects as the bearers of previously unimagined possibilities." - Carter Ratcliff

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Mark di Suvero (b. 1933), Untitled (Unique Piece), 1962. Steel and iron on wood base, 16 x 14 x 12 inches

Mark di Suvero (b. 1933), Untitled (Unique Piece), 1962. Steel and iron on wood base, 16 x 14 x 12 inches

“Hiding in Plain Sight” at FreedmanArt, New York

BLOUIN ART INFO

October 5

“Hiding in Plain Sight,” an exhibition of objects common, and curious will be on view at FreedmanArt, New York through December 29, 2018. The exhibition explores the transformation of common objects. The works of art have been made of marble, bronze, or oil paint on well-prepared canvases. Modernism turned artists’ attention to fugitive materials.

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NYC Gallery Scene - Highlights

Hamptons Art Hub

September 30

FreedmanArt presents “Hiding in Plain Sight, Objects Common & Curious,” in collaboration with American art critic, writer, and poet Carter Ratcliff. An investigation of the transformation of common, found, and readymade objects, the exhibition features works by early 20th century masters through today’s contemporary masters including Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Helen Frankenthaler, Pablo Picasso, Nancy Graves, Frank Stella, and Jean Shin, among others.

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Glenn Goldberg's Patchwork Universe

Glenn Goldberg, Guy 2 (Snow), 2011, Acrylic and ink on canvas, the New York Studio School. Photo: courtesy of the artist

To get an idea of the curious byways an artist might find himself exploring, here, in the twenty-first century, you can’t do better than head to the New York Studio School’s “Glenn Goldberg: Plums and Breezes,” an adumbrated, if somewhat bumpy, overview spanning forty years. “Plums and Breezes” begins in 1977, when Goldberg entered the Studio School as a student, and works its way to pieces of a more recent vintage by the now–Associate Professor of Painting at Queens College. Goldberg’s trajectory, and more so his landing place, offer an example of how quixotic the artist’s lot has become. Contemporary artists work in a media landscape teeming with imagery, not to mention a culture inured to the notion that art is an endeavor free of standards or definition. Creative types have been left to their own devices in ways that were unimaginable one hundred, let alone five hundred, years ago. The challenge of operating within this increasingly fluid playing field isn’t realizing an individual vision, but instead making that vision matter. Given the rabbit holes into which artists ensconce themselves nowadays, the big question is why the rest of us should feel obliged to follow. READ MORE…

Hudson Review

At the Galleries

April 28, 2018 - By Karen Wilkin

Colors, at FreedmanArt, 2018

Also on the Upper East Side, through early May, “Colors,” at FreedmanArt, brings together the work of more than twenty-five artists, all known for their inventive, expressive use of color, whether brilliant, raucous, or muted. It’s a notably diverse group of works on paper, paintings, and collages by such luminaries as Josef Albers, Jack Bush, Helen Frankenthaler, Hans Hofmann, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons, Susan Roth, Kurt Schwitters, and Frank Stella, among others. The gallery has been doing interesting thematic shows for some time—everything from works of art given by artists to their friends and colleagues to prints by painters who devoted a good deal of time to exploring other media. This exhibition takes as its point of departure a poem written by then twelve-year-old Zoe Kusyk, a student in Charlottesville, Virginia, a 2016 winner of “Writer’s Eye,” an annual competition held by the Fralin Museum of the University of Virginia that “challenges writers of all ages to create original works of poetry and prose inspired by works of art on display in the Museum.” Ms. Kusyk’s winning poem, titled “Colors,” was a response to a 1977 painting by Larry Poons, a cascade of liquid hues pulled by gravity into parallel but active rivulets, now remaining distinct, now mingling.

Review: "Colors" at FreedmanArt

(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.

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Blouin ArtInfo: "Colors" at FreedmanArt, New York

COLORS, February 15 - August 17, 2018 at FreedmanArt, New York

COLORS, February 15 - August 17, 2018 at FreedmanArt, New York

FreedmanArt “Colors” brings together works of more than 25 artists under one roof at its New York venue through August 17, 2018 “Colors” features artwork by Josef Albers, Lee Bontecou, Jack Bush, Friedel Dzubas, Sam Francis, Helen Frankenthaler, Glenn Goldberg, Nancy Graves, Stephen Greene, Grace Hartigan, Hans Hofmann, Paul Jenkins, Alfred Leslie, Robert Motherwell, Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Larry Poons, Susan Roth, Kurt Schwitters, David Smith, Theodoros Stamos, Frank Stella, Esteban Vicente, John Walker, Kit White, and Jack Youngerman.

All the artists are known for their inventive, expressive use of color, whether brilliant, raucous, or muted. It is a notably diverse group of works on paper, paintings, and collages by such luminaries as Josef Albers among others. FreedmanArt has been doing interesting thematic shows for some time — everything from works of art given by artists to their friends and colleagues to prints by painters who devoted a good deal of time to exploring other media.

"Colors" takes as its point of departure a poem written by then twelve-year-old Zoe Kusyk, a student in Charlottesville, Virginia, a 2016 winner of “Writer’s Eye,” an annual competition held by the Fralin Museum of the University of Virginia that “challenges writers of all ages to create original works of poetry and prose inspired by works of art on display in the Museum.” “Colors,” was a response to a 1977 painting by Larry Poons, a cascade of liquid hues pulled by gravity into parallel but active rivulets, now remaining distinct, now mingling. “Our commitment is to the artist, and to bringing art and collector together. FreedmanArt serves to educate the public with an active exhibition program, guided by invitational artist exhibitions and special project conceptions, both historical and new,” says the gallery.

The exhibition is on view through August 17, 2018, at FreedmanArt, 25 east 73rd street New York NY 10021.
blouinartinfo.com

Kit White at Freedman Art and the Institute of Fine Arts (NYU)

Arte Fuse
by Jonathan Goodman

June 15, 2017

Kit White, a painter of indisputably lyric accomplishment, is currently showing at two venues: FreedmanArt and the Institute of Fine Arts. Kit White, a painter of indisputably lyric accomplishment, is currently showing at two venues: FreedmanArt and the Institute of Fine Arts. White, now a mature artist is a long resident of New York City, where he has practiced a distinctive form of poetic suggestion, in which rickety, skeletal structures occupy the center of the composition, whose surrounds indicate a lonely landscape. Interestingly, though, his efforts do not necessarily derive from the New York School—even though White showed twice with Betty Parsons, a major gallerist of the movement, in the late 1970s. Certainly, he recognizes the fact that the abstract artists working shortly before him filled their paintings with inchoate, nonobjective form, intending to portray the strong emotion resulting from that form. But White is looking not so much for an expressionist intensity as he is interested in communicating a view that derives from a philosophical outlook and earlier history. A reader of contemporary poetry as well as a former student of Latin and Greek, White recognizes a time when culture was slower—a time when the act of painting was mediated by a knowledge of what preceded it, and when poetry was actually read.

Social (& Esthetic) Notes from all Over

(An Appropriate Distance) from he Mayor’s Doorstep
by Piri Halasz

October 26, 2016

This jewel of an exhibition features 34 mostly small works that were given by the artists who created them to friends—fellow artists, dealers, collectors, curators and critics. Most of the entries on the checklist list the owners demurely as “private collection,” but some of the inscriptions are more revealing. Thus we have a colored postcard with a Kenneth Noland target image, cleverly decorated with verticals on either side of the target to suggest (to my twisted mind, at least) the impression of a place setting, with fork, plate and knife.

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An Adventure that is always changing: Glenn Goldberg in conversation with ArtFile Magazine's Johnny Thornton

Artfile Magazine
by Johnny Thornton

March 2016

“...The idea of making a painting that is quiet, at times a bit complicated and stirred, yet ordered and dreamy is at the center of these works. They are airy and do not assert themselves as matter. For the most part, they tend to exist in the sky or in the water. They incorporate aspects of the decorative arts and are concerned with both what a painting can be and what painting already is. I am lost inside of them. They include questions and have their own demands. They always want to be more than they are. It is difficult to be legible, challenging to be generous, and an effort to push through a variety of obstacles in order to give fully to them.”

Gifts, loans combine to place pivotal art movement in spotlight at Nelson-Atkins

Make Room for Color Field at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City

ArtDaily

December 12, 2015

A single act of generosity by a collector and supporter of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City has resulted in the gifting of five more works of art, a handful of loans, and an installation celebrating Color Field painting. Luther W. Brady, M.D., one of the world’s foremost oncologists, gifted the museum with Jules Olitski’s Embraced: Yellow and Black, in the memory of his dear friend Joanne Lyon, a longtime supporter of the Nelson-Atkins. Inspired by that gift, an anonymous donor loaned the Nelson-Atkins Helen Frankenthaler’s Elberta, another quintessential example of Color Field painting. Then Kristina Olitski gave the Nelson-Atkins four Jules Olitski prints to complement one already owned by the museum, thereby creating a complete set. The recent acquisitions, not including the Olitski prints, will be celebrated in the installation Make Room for Color Field, which opened Dec. 11.

Making Art, and Making it Well: Two Recent Group Shows

ArtCritical.com
by David Carrier

April 3, 2015

Some finished works of art efface evidence of the process of their own making. A painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres or Philip Pearlstein doesn’t reveal how it was made — in that way, it is like a photograph. There is, by contrast, a special fascination in art which, by revealing the activity of its own making, makes that process part of its meaning. Such art, it might be said, is the most aesthetic visual art — it is doubly art because we both identify its abstract or figurative subject and enjoy seeing how that subject was rendered. We find this happening with Abstract Expressionism, as represented at FreedmanArt’s “Art in the Making,” by marvelous signature style works by Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, among others, and by artworks from artists of succeeding generations who extended that tradition.

Arts Review: At the Galleries

The Hudson Review
by Karen Wilkin

August 27, 2014

A few blocks away, at FreedmanArt, “Carved, Cast, Crushed, Constructed” included an equally impressive group of intimately scaled sculptures by artists ranging from Joseph Cornell and David Smith to Lee Bontecou and Frank Stella, plus one “abstract” antique artifact, all assembled, like much of the Mnuchin exhibition, from private collections.