Robert Kelly

Recent Paintings

November 18 - December 31, 2004

Statement

In his third solo exhibition at the John Berggruen Gallery, Kelly will be featuring an array of oil and mixed media paintings that explore the formal relationships between color, form, and space. This body of work is characterized by intricately constructed surfaces and reductive imagery involving simple shapes and solid colors. Kelly is concerned with the concept of compression in these paintings: how his subject matter is held together by the pressure of the frame and how forms are edited by the borders of the canvas. The simple formality of the Bauhaus aesthetic, as well as the work of Van Doesburg, Mondrian, and Malevich, has clearly informed Kelly's paintings. The palette is rich in black, white, and primary colors set against backgrounds of natural hues.

In addition to being part of many private collections, Kelly's work is also represented in a number of museum collections including the University of New Mexico Art Museum, the Brooklyn Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe, the Smith College Art Museum in Massachusetts, and the Milwaukee Art Museum.