Reception: August 31, 5:30-7:30
Santa Fe, NM – Timothy Schmitz has become an accomplished virtuoso of color, light, shape and idea fused into refined, elegant surfaces that create quiet and timeless objects of beauty and contemplation. Those surfaces embody a wide range of materials, including oil, wax, ground marble, alkyd and resin on supports of vinyl, canvas and board. His luminescent pieces defy exact classification as either paintings or sculpture. The distinction is largely irrelavent to Schmitz who believes strongly that art is about ideas and that those ideas manifest themselves through that medium which best represents the idea.
On August 31, LewAllen Contemporary premiers a unique body of work that is minimalist in concept but complex in technique. In each piece, layered planes of translucent, ethereal color—made of pigmented wax, resin, enamel and Plexiglas—alternate with vertical supports of pale, laminated ash. Beyond providing the means for attaching the work to the wall, the ash supports are integral to the visual whole. They segment the composition as vertical elements while adding sculptural depth of 2 to 6 inches.
Suffused in this new work is a refined sense of what might be thought of as a Japanese aesthetic notion that beauty comes from the visually modest and humble. There is quiet grace in these pieces, a purging of the extraneous and a reduction to visual essence. An aura-like luminescence seems to radiate from these elegant orchestrations of surface mastery. The effect is one of reductive elegance helping to still the mind and enabling a contemplative, intuitive insight that transcends mere intellectual conception.
Schmitz has gravitated toward translucent mediums in recent years, and in this latest work he handles them to wondrous effect. With virtuosic skill, he differentiates vertical and horizontal areas of color by varying the number of layers of pigmented wax to create both hard-edged stripes and soft, ethereal transitions in hue. The overall effect is of a luminous structure with a floating composition of light and color.
People have noticed that the pieces are interactive: they appear to change as the viewer walks around them. With different areas of color varying in translucency, the surface seems to be in relief even though it is in fact quite smooth, and the apparent depth of each area shifts with the angle of vision. The wax surfaces are very tactile and nearly beg to be touched. “That tactile quality,” Schmitz says, “generates a lot of emotion in people who see them.”
He acknowledges being influenced by Richard Serra’s minimalist forms and Gerhard Richter’s resistance to being pigeonholed, and he suggests that working in a minimalist mode gives him the greatest degree of flexibility. For many years as a ceramicist, Schmitz pushed the limits of that medium. Highly process oriented, he experimented with nontraditional, nonfunctional forms—including wall pieces—and unusual, hand-applied finishes rather than traditional glazes. Avidly exploring materials—much like a kid in a candy shop, he has said—he is still an inveterate experimenter. The ideas come effortlessly, but much trial and error is involved before he can begin producing work. “My studio is more like a lab,” he told us.
Born in Wisconsin, Schmitz learned ceramics during high school and was offered a scholarship to the ceramics program at Alfred University in New York; instead, he joined a rock band and toured the country as a musician for several years. Years later, during convalescence from a serious leg injury, he began working in clay again. He first exhibited at LewAllen Contemporary as a ceramicist in 1995. His work has been included in museum shows, in exhibitions of the American Craft Council, and in gallery shows across the country.
LewAllen Contemporary is open 9:30-5:30 Monday through Saturday and 11:00-5:00 Sunday. Timothy Schmitz’ Luminosity exhibition runs from Friday, August 31, through Sunday, September 30, 2007. For further information please contact Diane Kell at (505) 988-8997 or [email protected].
