Jeff Bailey Gallery is pleased to present Eric Wolf: Paintings opening Thursday, October 12, 2006 from 6-8PM.
In a palette of black and white, Wolf’s paintings define a turbulent space that is at once deep and exceedingly narrow. Undulating forms jostle and coalesce into rhythmic and elastic forms, evoking the landscapes upon which they are based.
Wolf’s paintings, based on direct observation, transform utterly anonymous scenes into highly specific tableaus. Within the constraints of black and white, the act of lending form to boundless space places his work in an unanticipated lineage, between the immediacy of Franz Kline and the mediation of Gerhard Richter.
In the painting Skyocean, positive and negative figures establish a field of relationships across the surface in contradiction with the spatial depth articulated by the apparent landscape. Clouds above a roiling ocean give definition to an overwhelming, monumental scope of space. The boulders in the foreground, being undecidedly enormous or extremely up close, combined with sky, water and mark making produce a space of continuous oscillation.
On the one hand, Wolf’s paintings are as indebted to modern abstraction as they are to the history of pictorial landscape painting. On the other hand, they provide a re-synthesis that implies an autonomous artistic practice. His work thus provides the opportunity for a rare, critical reflection on the state of contemporary painting.
This is Eric Wolf’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, and his fourth in New York. His work will be featured in the upcoming exhibition In Monet’s Garden: The Lure of Giverny at the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio and the Musée Marmottan, Paris.
For further information or images, please contact the gallery at 212.989.0156 or info@baileygallery.com.
