The Color Field movement – defined by saturated paint and amorphous shapes – was a distinctive approach pioneered by Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, a conscious rejection the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline.
There’s a new generation of artists echoing and reinventing that practice – and none more so than the Brooklyn-based artist Landon Metz.
Paul Kasmin Gallery’s latest staging cleverly juxtaposes Metz’s newest endeavours right alongside one of Louis’ seminal Veil paintings in the exhibition ‘Morris Louis/Landon Metz’.
Front and centre is Louis’s iconic 1958 work, Tzadik, with its layers of diluted paint in a palette of moss greens that bleed into tobacco browns and burnt orange. Next to that pivotal work are Metz’s four Untitled paintings, each measuring some six feet in length as well as close to five feet in width.
‘Like Louis, Landon questions the traditional processes, such as brush work, involved in creating a painting,’ says Eric Gleason, the gallery director who co-curated this show with the art critic Alex Bacon. ‘Where he continues to push those boundaries is with regard to the painting versus sculpture categorisation, and the image versus object power struggle,’ he adds.
Rather than turning to highly thinned paint, Metz literally pours acrylic blue dye onto unprimed, unstretched canvases, and in doing so, achieves a sense of stain. ‘The dye literally flows over the canvas and creates a new form,’ he points out. Metz’s Pillar is just that – a freestanding, cube-like sculpture comprised of individual sections also rendered in blue dye against an untreated canvas.
With so much of contemporary art marked by sharp angles and an occasionally day-glo palette, Landon’s work is thrillingly meditative in nature.
Metz, a Brooklyn-based contemporary artist, echoes and reinvents the practice established by Louis, which is defined by saturated paint and amorphous shapes. Pictured: one of Metz’s Untitled works on display
‘Like Louis, Landon questions the traditional processes, such as brush work, involved in creating a painting,’ says Eric Gleason, the gallery director who co-curated this show with the art critic Alex Bacon
Front and centre is Louis’s iconic 1958 work, Tzadik (pictured), with its layers of diluted paint in a palette of moss greens that bleed into tobacco browns and burnt orange
INFORMATION
’Morris Louis/Landon Metz’ is on view until 9 April. For more information, visit Paul Kasmin Gallery’s website
ADDRESS
Paul Kasmin Gallery
515 West 27th St
New York, NY 10001
-
Tobi Masa lands at The Chancery RosewoodChef Masa Takayama’s debut London restaurant transforms modernist geometry into a space of ritual calm and culinary purity
-
Bionic Labs builds precision next-level Apple accessories from aluminium and stainless steelFrom stands, chargers and keyboard trays to a set of accessories for the Vision Pro, Parisian design studio Bionic Labs offers only the best for your Apple gear
-
Yuko Mohri’s living installations play on Marcel Duchamp’s surrealismThe artist’s seven new works on show at Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca explore the real and imaginary connections that run through society
-
Out of office: The Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekFrom sumo wrestling to Singaporean fare, medieval manuscripts to magnetic exhibitions, the Wallpaper* team have traversed the length and breadth of culture in the British capital this week
-
María Berrío creates fantastical worlds from Japanese-paper collages in New YorkNew York-based Colombian artist María Berrío explores a love of folklore and myth in delicate and colourful works on paper
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekAs we approach Frieze, our editors have been trawling the capital's galleries. Elsewhere: a 'Wineglass' marathon, a must-see film, and a visit to a science museum
-
June Leaf’s New York survey captures a life in motionJune Leaf made art in many forms for over seven decades, with an unstoppable energy and fierce appetite leading her to rationalise life in her own terms.
-
Jamel Shabazz’s photographs are a love letter to Prospect ParkIn a new book, ‘Prospect Park: Photographs of a Brooklyn Oasis, 1980 to 2025’, Jamel Shabazz discovers a warmer side of human nature
-
The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles launches the seventh iteration of its highly anticipated artist biennialOne of the gallery's flagship exhibitions, Made in LA showcases the breadth and depth of the city's contemporary art scene
-
Inside a Courtney Love-inspired art exhibition in New YorkLiza Jo Eilers looks to the glory days of Hole at an exhibition at Grimm New York
-
Thomas Prior’s photography captures the uncanny fragility of American lifeA new book unites two decades of the photographer’s piercing, uneasy work
