Peter Freeman, Inc, New York, is pleased to present an exhibition of recent sculptures by Frank Stella. This is Stella’s second solo show with the gallery, and features 14 works primarily from two series, “Scarlatti K” and “Circus.” Furthering his career-long engagement with expanding the means of abstraction to create space, in both series Stella entwines central resin forms (made using 3-D printing technology) with seemingly tensile metal pipes and rods to create compositions that abound with a high-spirited dynamism.
In the “Scarlatti K” works, Stella pays homage to the work of musicologist Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-1984) who, in 1953, published a catalogue of the work of Italian composer Domenico Scarlatti (1685–1757). The technicolor sculptures are synaesthetic experiences in which one’s eye fixes on an edge, or entry point, and is then carried along through the piece as though coursing through the rhythm and movement of a complex musical composition.
Stella’s foundation in the “Circus” series, his newest body of work, is the tradition of artists contemplating and working with circus imagery and form. At once ambitious and playful, the series recalls Stella’s earlier work adjoeman (2004) installed on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2007, and continues themes begun in his 2009 Circus of Pure Feeling for Malevich, his first work on the subject. Here, the central shapes are smaller and more muted in tone than in the earlier “Scarlatti K” works and the supporting structures holding them are larger and even more active–the resulting impression is of an almost atomic energy.
In the late 1950s, while in his early 20s, Stella was quickly and decisively heralded as an innovator of Minimalism with his geometric paintings that rejected subject, false perspective, and representation. His early work was included in several seminal exhibitions in the 1960s in New York, among them the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s “The Shaped Canvas” (1965) and “Systemic Painting” (1966), and in 1970 he became the youngest artist ever to be honored with a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. Throughout the next four decades, his work evolved apace—first to shaped canvases, then collage, assemblage, and high relief work, and eventually into full 3-dimensionality, large public sculptural commissions, and architectural projects. In 2009, Stella was awarded the National Medal of Arts. His work is represented in the world’s most renowned public collections and he has had hundreds of solo exhibitions, most recently a 2012 retrospective at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg. Frank Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts in 1936, and lives and works in New York.
A reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, 9 January from 6 to 8 pm.
For reproduction requests, interviews with the artist, and general inquiries, please contact the gallery at 212-966-5154 or info@peterfreemaninc.com.
