Marc Selwyn Fine Art brings us two new exhibitions featuring the art of Kevin Reinhardt, and Kurt Kauper. The gallery will host an opening reception on Saturday, March 12, 2022 from 5-7pm. Remember to confirm with the venue last minute covid protocols and guidelines – (proof of vaccination and masks MAY be required).
“Kevin Reinhardt: New Work” is presented in cooperation with Grice Bench. The artists’s meticulously rendered windows could easily be mistaken for minimalist abstractions in the spirit of Barnett Newman. Closer inspection reveals each canvas to be an exacting rendering of slatted blinds. In each composition, solid boxes of color are obscured by the vertical or horizontal louvers. Single strands of colored thread sewn into the canvas highlight the edges and planes, complicating the surface and reinforcing the illusion of three-dimensionality. Irregularities in the blinds – slats are misaligned, the blinds are only half open, edges are broken – occur in every canvas. These views offer a window with limited narrative content (think Sigmund Freud’s windows to the unconscious); the mystery of what might be glimpsed if the blinds are raised remains unknown.
Trained as an architect, Reinhardt frequently identifies specific locations as catalysts for his compositions. In this series, his “window paintings” are based on the scaled elevational drawings of Swedish architect Sigurd Lewerentz’s St. Petri Church in Klippan, Sweden. Lewerentz’s design for this building – austere in means but luxurious in thought – has inspired generations to consider context, materials and the methodology of construction as integral to the poetry of architectural form.
For the entirety of his career, Kurt Kauper has explored the communicative possibilities of form by investigating figurative representation. While his subject matter has included contemporary celebrities, athletes, political figures and opera divas, real and imagined, his works are executed with the technical acuity of an Old Master drawing – the kind he fell in love with as an art-obsessed kid.
In addition to this presentation with Marc Selwyn Fine Art, and in keeping with the artist’s keen interest in the history of painting, Kauper’s painted response to “Edouard Manet’s Le Dejeuner sur I’herbe – “the first modern painting” – can be seen in Jeffery Deitch’s current LA exhibition, “Luncheon on the Grass.” CLICK HERE to see info on that exhibition.
On view: March 12 – April 16, 2022
What: Kevin Reinhardt, Kurt Kauper
Where: Marc Selwyn Fine Art, 9953 South Santa Monica Boulevard, Beverly Hills, 90212
When: March 12, 2022, 5:00 – 7:00pm
Website: https://www.marcselwynfineart.com/
