Robert Kushner: Opening Doors
September 21 - October 23 , 2004

This is the second New York City solo exhibition of Robert Kushner's paintings of flowers executed on antique Japanese screens and doors. The works reflect the artist’s longtime appreciation of Japanese art and culture combined with a deft utilization of composer John Cage’s “chance operation” system of composition. A full color catalogue will accompany the exhibition.

“Many of the works in this show are painted on Japanese sliding doors called fusama,” Kushner explains, “The door still has the possibility of being opened, leaving us to wonder what is behind it. The sense of illusionistic space is destroyed by the potential sliding of the door, revealing another reality behind itself.”

Kushner began experimenting several years ago with utilizing elements of John Cage’s theories of chance composition as a major component in his own painting. Multiple layers of randomness echo throughout the works -- starting with the sheer accident of the physical survival of the individual antique screens and doors and their arrival in Kushner’s New York studio and culminating in the compositions themselves: rows of similar leaves or flowers are repeated, with the selection of color or form indicated by chance operation, and the use of counting and placement systems which yield strangely unexpected but surprisingly naturalistic results.

Viewers who attended Kushner’s last exhibition at DC Moore will note a new range and breadth to the color schemes. Kushner is currently working with clusters and families of related colors that are harmonious yet surprising, evoking Edwardian interiors or the faded glory of a Safavid carpet.

“Through this recent body of work, I feel that some new doors have opened,” Kushner comments in his essay in the exhibition catalogue. “It is the nature of doors to enclose. However, at other moments they can slide open to reveal the mysteries within a shadowed room or the unexpected possibilities of a distant vista.”