FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PAUL RESIKA Recent Paintings
May 5 – June 5, 2010
Lori Bookstein Fine Art is pleased to present its first one-person show of paintings by Paul Resika.
Painted over the last four years, Resika’s compositions are, as ever, a balancing act between the observed scenes of his surroundings and the fantastic – sometimes entirely fictional – motifs he reshapes them to be. The backdrops of Maine and Cape Cod may be familiar, but their level of abstraction will come as something of a surprise to viewers acquainted with the artist’s lush landscapes and seascapes of the 1980’s and 90’s.
Resika’s long-standing concern for captured light and his signature painterly strokes have become instruments of a growing linearity and geometry. Boat groups, which he had already pared down to simple arrangements of blocks and swishes, are reduced further to metonymic triangles. Sea and sky are turned into barely interrupted planes of color, while our traditional orientation towards space and depth is repeatedly uprooted. Two new motifs emerge in this body of work: the lighthouses of Maine and the tropical beaches of Jamaica. Despite such a disparity in mood and location, the alchemical transformation of Resika’s painting produces a strength and vitality which is independent from his original input.
Charles Simic, in his introduction to the exhibition catalogue, relishes that “neither fully abstract nor realistic, these lighthouses, sailboats, dinghies and sea cliffs surrounded by water and sky in their splendor are like brightly-colored stage sets in some uproarious comic opera or children’s play. Stripped of any hint of allegory or fable, they recall at different times expressionism, cubism and even surrealism. They leave the viewer awed and delighted that a style so seemingly simple can be so commanding, so highly-original, memorable and beautiful.”
Paul Resika was born in 1928 in New York City. As a teenager he took classes with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, before leaving for Venice and Rome in the early 1950’s to study the old masters. Casting off first the vein of abstraction he learned from Hofmann, and next his dark Italian palette, Resika returned to the United States to devote himself increasingly to light and color. His six decade-long career has included shows at Peridot Gallery, Graham Modern, Long Point Gallery, Berta Walker Gallery, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, and Salander-O’Reilly Galleries. Resika is represented by Lori Bookstein Fine Art in New York and Berta Walker Gallery in Provincetown.
His work is represented in the collections of the Hood Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Whiney Museum of American Art, among numerous others. Grants and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship and election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Academy of Design.
Paul Resika: Recent Paintings will be on view through Saturday, June 5, 2010. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 am to 6:00 pm, and by appointment. For additional information or visual materials, please contact the gallery at (212) 750-0949 or [email protected].
