Marc Selwyn Fine Art is pleased to present the gallery’s first exhibition with Robert Barry curated by Thomas Solomon.
This exhibition of early works by Robert Barry explores the artist’s intensive investigation into what painting on canvas can be, directing us to observe and experience the medium in non-traditional ways. Barry’s interplay between primary colors, geometric shapes, and architectural space takes painting beyond the canvas, creating new ways of reading and understanding subject matter and meaning.
Barry’s early 1960s canvases eschew complex color and gesture in order to reference and explore the space they inhabit. Untitled, 1963, with its patterned rows of small red squares on a blue ground, and Untitled, 1964 with its white squares on a red ground, are early examples of Barry’s exploration of architectural forms. In Green Line, 1966, a work with three canvases separated by four inches, Barry redefines the dimensions of a painting with a thin green line extending horizontally from inside the first panel, through a blank panel, to within an inch of the third canvas’ right edge. The continuous movement from one canvas to another unifies the triptych into a single seamless work.
Barry’s paintings are not bound to walls. Instead, they function more as objects which incorporate the walls they occupy. Untitled, 1966, for example, hangs in the center of a wall, but extends beyond its four canvases, activated by the space that surrounds it. In two untitled paintings from 1968, black and gray electrical tape is adhered horizontally to small square Masonite boards. These works question the physicality and construction of paintings with unconventional materials that dissect and bracket the space they inhabit. The artist’s experimental media blur the boundaries between painting, drawing, collage and conceptual art.
Robert Barry bridged minimalism with conceptual practice, moving from the individual canvas to dynamic, multi-panel paintings which double as sculptural forms. Barry’s works reveal and conceal, disconnect and connect simultaneously. We experience something unknown and yet strangely familiar as he leads us on a journey of wonder and poetic beauty.
Born in 1936, Robert Barry currently lives and works in New Jersey. Since his first solo exhibition in 1964, Barry's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad. In 1969, he had his first show in Europe with Gian Enzo Sperone at Galleria Sperone in Turin. Barry has had numerous solo shows including a traveling exhibition in 2003, Some places to which we can come: Robert Barry, Works 1963 to 1975, which traveled to the Kunsthalle Nürnberg, Germany and the Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland. Barry's work is included in several museum collections including The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Musee National d’Art Moderne, Centre George Pompidou, Paris; the Kunstmuseum, Basel, and the Museum Moderner Kunst, Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna.