Trigger Warning
Artist Reception: Friday, April 21, 6:00 – 8:30 pm On view: April 21 – May 27, 2017 “Since March 7, 1972, my oeuvre [has been] dedicated to a spinning off of light, color, form, retinal vibration, space, and the materiality of a chosen medium and its respective immateriality.” -HJ Bott In celebration of HJ Bott’s 70th year of exhibiting artwork, Anya Tish Gallery is delighted to announce Thick and Thin and Back Again, a solo exhibition featuring selected paintings from the Artist’s most acclaimed and highly collected Monochrome Series, created in the 1970s, alongside recently created wire sculptures. Bott, an institution of the Houston art community since the 1980s, is a painter, sculptor, theorist, and a self-described Baroque Minimalist. Though different in form, color, and material, the artist’s two- and three-dimensional works are united by an underlying formula he conceived in 1972 called the Displacement of Volume System. The DoV System, a configurational and mathematical concept based on the placement of line, the juxtaposition of form and color, the discovery of symbols and the visual exploration of adjacent or opposing forces, has been present in his practice for the past 45 years. The striking, metallic hues in the monochromatic works are created with Bott’s own concoction of titanium mica flakes with acrylic paints and gels, applied thickly to the canvas in DoV-generated segments of angled peaks and valleys. The gracefully irregular amalgam of forms, textures and finishes in the painting-relief hybrids harbor a remarkable multidimensionality. Sections of the canvas alternate between bright highlights and dark shadows, causing the image to appear to invert from left to right. The sculptures, created by the Artist rigorously forming geometric-patterned industrial mesh and wire into curvilinear shapes, are corporal representations of his concepts. Either situated on the floor or installed onto the wall, their web-like surfaces produce elaborate shadows that further develop the material’s inherent line-work. Born in 1933, HJ Bott first came to prominence in the mid 1950s in Germany and France while working as a propaganda analyst for the United States Army. His massive oeuvre, which spans seven decades, has been exhibited in more than 80 solo exhibitions and 700 group exhibitions. Bott’s work can be found in over 200 private, public and corporate collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston, TX; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; Kunsthalle Der Garten, Dusseldorf, Germany; New York University, New York City, NY; Columbia University, New York City, NY; Rice University, Houston, TX; Continental Air Command, The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.; United States Department of the Interior, Washington, D.C.
Date
April 21, 2017
Location
Anya Tish Gallery
4411 Montrose Blvd.
Houston, Texas, United States
77006
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