Spanierman Warehouse Showroom, across the street from The Armory,
625 West 55th Street, New York, NY, 5th Floor, March 3-8, 2009, 10 am-5:30 pm.
Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri,
May 15-August 30th, 2009
Traveling to: Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln,
October 23, 2009-January 31, 2010
Spanierman Modern is pleased to announce the opening of two exhibitions of the work of Dan Christensen, which explore the artist’s numerous and exuberant styles and techniques that place him among the country’s most ambitious abstract and gestural painters. Although long associated with the
Color Field movement, Christensen had a relentless desire to experiment with tools and pictorial space, as he expanded the limits, range, and possibilities of paint and form through both systematic and spontaneous methods. The noted critic Clement Greenberg wrote in 1990:
“Dan Christensen is one of the painters on whom the course of American art depends.”
The exhibitions, in New York (coinciding with the Armory Show) as well as in Kansas City (Missouri) and Lincoln (Nebraska), acknowledge the recognition that is due to Christensen, who during his lifetime was widely acclaimed by critics but little known to the public. The shows provide an opportunity to consider the historical context and iconoclastic nature of this sophisticated, yet playful work, that has been described aptly as conjuring “an inner luminescence that creates an understated, though decidedly exuberant, ambiance.”
The show organized by the Kemper Museum will be
accompanied by a catalogue (order above) by the noted scholar Karen Wilkin and will include contributions from Rachel Blackburn Cozad, curator, Kemper Museum; Sharon Kennedy, curator, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery; and Douglas Drake, a long-time friend of the artist.
Born in Cozad, Nebraska, in 1942, the son of a farmer and truck driver, Christensen chose to become an artist when, as a teenager, he saw the work of Jackson Pollock on a trip to Denver. After receiving his B.F.A. from the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, in 1964, he moved to New York City. Within two years, he rose quickly to fame, as part of a group of young artists who revived painting after a period in which minimalism prevailed. Dating from this period
Times Square (1967; Kemper and Sheldon) is among the stacked “spray loop” paintings for which Christensen first gained renown, in which he used a spray paint gun to create repeating calligraphic circles, producing shimmering allover surface effects. Also from this time are “ribbon” paintings such as
Chevade (1968, Spanierman, Kemper, and Sheldon) and
Serpens (1968, Kemper and Sheldon), in which animated lines loop through saturated, stained surfaces.
From the 1970s until his death in 2007, Christensen was unrelenting in his exploration of new techniques as well as in his approach to forms that had held his attention in the past. Thicker surface treatments in
Mayan Mist (1986, Spanierman) and
Love Attic (1986, Kemper and Sheldon) are abraded with sticks and brush ends, resulting in works of barely contained energy. In
Triton (1989, Kemper and Sheldon),
Dolan (1988, Spanierman), and
Beyond the Summer of Love (1988, Spanierman) Christensen returned to the loop, using color sprays to create blurred circles and lozenges that are evanescent and spiritual.
In paintings begun in mid-1990s, Christensen conjoined his thematic elements. In
5 or 6 P.M. (1994, Kemper and Sheldon) melting orbs of color move through a heightened reddish Mars-like atmosphere, in which shifting lines imply the Pythagorian harmony of the spheres. In
Vanilla Blue (1998, Spanierman) and Ray (1998, Kemper and Sheldon), the bull’s eye assumes cosmic proportions, while
Eve’s Garden (2005, Kemper and Sheldon) and
Draco (2005, Spanierman) evoke cellular and atomic energy and matter. The electrically charged quality of
Yellathrilla (2006, Kemper and Sheldon) and
Reddzilla (2006, Spanierman) reflect the intensity with which Christensen was working when his career was abruptly ended by his death.
Christensen received a National Endowment Grant in 1968 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969. His paintings are in numerous public collections, including the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the
Museum of Modern Art, New York; the
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the
Seattle Art Museum, and many others.
For over forty years, Christensen had an unfailing commitment to change and growth, and regardless of the vicissitudes within the art world, he essayed new experimental approaches while often restating old themes. The joie de vivre of his art entices us to share his passion for creative innovation and living life to the fullest.
