We are very excited to announce the opening of our Peter Blum Gallery in Chelsea. This new space will be in addition to our Soho gallery (99 Wooster Street at Spring Street). In the Chelsea gallery we will continue our program and expand in new directions.
The inaugural exhibition Paintings features six recent large-scale paintings, the largest of which is 10’ x 11’, by Joseph Marioni, and runs from April 27 to July 1, 2006.
Please join us for an opening reception on April 27, 2006 from 6pm to 8pm. The new gallery is located at 526 West 29th Street.
In these new works, as in the past 35 years, Marioni explores the potential of color via the medium of painting. In Marioni’s words, ‘the essence of painting is the articulation of color, because color is what distinguishes painting as painting, it doesn’t translate into the other senses, its identity is unique.’ Marioni applies successive layers of transparent and translucent acrylic paint to his vertical, slightly slanted, canvases, allowing each layer’s downward flow. Sometimes he manipulates this flow (by pushing the paint up) and changes the direction of the paint’s gravitational pull. This downward flow of the top layer and the upward push from the lower layers create a powerful tension; the paintings seem to be in internal movement.
Each of the paintings occupies a unique sense of space. Every particular hue invokes a different emotional resonance or reverberation. While Marioni’s paintings often comprise a wide spectrum of colors, the viewer experiences them as unified tonal experience. Marioni thinks of color as subject in itself.
Marioni has been widely exhibited nationally and internationally. His museum exhibitions include the Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany (1995); the Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, Switzerland (1996); the Secession Vienna, Austria (1996); a mid-career retrospective (Paintings 1970-1998 A Survey) at Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University; the University Art Museum/ The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (2000-2001); and the Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, Texas (2003).