WITH ONE COLOR
Curated by Paul Frank McCabe
Van de Weghe Fine Art, New York: April 30 - June 30, 2011
PRESS RELEASE:
With One Color is an exhibition of unity within diversity, inspired by today’s lack of solidarity, and an ongoing dispersed artistic practice. Bringing together a selection of monochromatic artworks created post 1940 up until present, the show returns to a pure definition of monochrome as a single color that is free from political and modernist connotations. The monochrome becomes a unifying link that cuts through typical chronological and medium-based classifications. Not an historical survey, With One Color is a suggestion of the monochrome’s account of many meanings.
If it is modern masters like Yves Klein and Manzoni that defined the monochrome as the epitome of abstraction, the end of painting, then the show aims at toying with these standards by pairing modern works with contemporary artists. For example, Anish Kapoor’s choice of a singular reflective gold creates a visual effect that includes the viewer, its sensuality runs counter to the Monochromes restrained nature. In the same expansive pace, Aaron Young’s juxtapositions of high and low culture fit paradoxically in the contemplative realm of the monochrome. It is these very contradictions and varied conceptual frameworks that With One Color aims to reveal.
The artists in the exhibition include: Aaron Young, Agostino Bonalumi, Anish Kapoor, Enrico Castellani, Lucio Fontana, Olivier Mosset, Piero Manzoni, Rashid Johnston, Richard Aldrich, Robert Melee, Robert Ryman, Rudolf Stingel, Scott Lyall, Yves Klein