The imaginary anatomy varies
with the ideas (clear or confused) about bodily functions which are prevalent
in a given culture. It all happens as
if body-image has an autonomous existence of its own and by autonomous I mean here
independent of objective.
structure.
For the past decade, Bradley Rubenstein has been exploring
and constructing a world of imaginary anatomy. His is an art that slyly
interrogates the boundaries of artistic creativity and scientific or biological
generation. While his practice falls
within the tradition of modernist critique: investigating the nature of
painting and its relationship to representation and figuration; art history (Joseph
Beuys); and the nature of materials, the works?? ultimate meaning is
deceptively complex. On first viewing the paintings appear to be abstract
expressionist canvases which have lost their way in 21st century galleries when
in fact they are anything but spontaneous (some of the paintings in this
exhibition took three years to complete), expressionist or even pure paintings.
It is the combination of such labor intensive extended periods of production,
with the use of paints composed of ground semi-precious stones ( i.e.
malachite, lapis lazuli or purplelite stone), and carbon-based or lead mediums,
that removes his work from the category of painting in the traditional
sense. Rubenstein’s „portraits” are not
representations made in oil but organic beings of potential or past life is the
basic element of the human body; As
portraits, they are of a specific person or object, but also may be said to be,
shifting the ground from representation to generative existentialism. In this
sense the portraits are flat organic sculptures made from earthy materials,
which masquerade as painterly high modernist canvases. Surface is both Rubenstein’s subject and
foil; for in order to understand the
work, it is the surface one must decode
and move beyond.
Thyrza Nichols
Goodeve
Bradley
Rubenstein has been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship in Painting and a Pollock Krasner Award; his works are included in
the collections
of The Detroit Institute of Arts and The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among
others. This is Mr. Rubenstein’s fourth solo exhibition in New York City.
For further information
contact Marion Ziola or Wolf
Dieter Stoffelmeier @
212.727.7575
Gallery Hours: Tuesday -
Saturday, 11 - 6