Al Loving: Space, Time, Light at Garth Greenan Gallery
Garth Greenan Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of work by Stamps alum Al Loving (MFA ‘69) entitled Al Loving: Space, Time, Light, an exhibition of paintings and mixed media constructions at 545 W 20th Street, New York, NY. On view Thursday, October 25-Friday, December 21, this exhibition provides an in-depth look at Loving’s work from 1976 to 1993 — a period of immense transformation for an artist with a keen eye for color and an ever-changing attitude toward form and composition.
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 am‑6 pm.
Chiefly inspired by Henri Matisse, Loving’s first mature works were geometric, hard-edge abstractions, painted in bright colors. His solo show at the Whitney Museum in 1969 featured these bold, simplified color studies. Despite the early critical and commercial success of this exhibition, after 1972, he began his most experimental phase, making use of sweeping expanses of richly colored fabric suspended on the wall. Made from torn canvas, these wall-hangings dispensed with notions of centralized composition, figure/ground separation, and pictorial frame. Their rich and intuitive array of colors stretches irregularly, extending to the floor, encompassing the surrounding space, and engulfing the viewer.
Born in Detroit in 1935, Loving relocated to New York in 1968. A staunch abstractionist, his works were built upon strict yet simple geometric shapes — often hexagonal or cubic modules. Inspired by Hans Hoffmann (who taught Loving’s mentor Al Mullen), Loving concentrated on the tension between flatness and spatial illusionism. He explored this tension using a hard-edged geometric vocabulary related to Minimalism — as in Untitled, 1969, which uses a strategic layering of cubic forms and juxtaposition of warm and cool colors to create an optical play of three-dimensionality.
Loving’s work is featured in the collections of major museums around the country, including: Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas; the Detroit Institute of Arts; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Museum of Modern Art; the National Gallery of Art; the Pérez Art Museum Miami; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Rose Art Museum, Waltham, Massachusetts; and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Al Loving: Space, Time, Light at Garth Greenan Gallery | garthgreenan.com