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Indepth Arts News:
"Glen Rubsamen: Hopewell"
2003-04-22 until 2003-05-24
Esso Gallery
New York, NY,
USA United States of America
In the paintings which Glen Rubsamen will exhibit at Esso entitled ‘Hopewell Series’ he creates hyper-realistic images which play with the idea of photographic simulation, using silhouettes, in particular those of trees and rocks, as a constant leitmotif, as though they were underdeveloped film negatives.
The work is characterized by a documentary interest in compiling, like collectibles, situations in nature of great dramatic intensity in the romantic tradition, such as sunrises and sunsets, exuberant vegetation, or images of the apocalypse. Through brusque combinations of different perspectives and violent foreshortening of the objects and trees, the artist shows us an uninhabited and almost aggressive world, an assaulted nature that makes us think of the devastating after-affects of a meteorological or technological catastrophe. These characteristics, combined with the absence of human presence, the tendency towards monochrome and the lack of spatio-temporal references create an atmosphere charged with austere quietude and spirituality. Rubsamen is the painter of a nature where the organic appears in artificial images.
Glen Rubsamen’s paintings are increasingly unconventional in their approach, based on reproducing the precise outline of forms for a piecemeal and fragmentary vision which often makes it hard for us to locate the point of view. The paintings of Glen Rubsamen stand apart from the conventional notion of landscape, they afford an altogether new vision of the natural world.
Glen Rubsamen was born in Los Angeles, California and studied at U.C.L.A. where he received his MFA in 1981. He lives and works in New York and Cologne. He has exhibited in recent years at the Kunstverein Munich and Galerie Michael Cosar, Düsseldorf, Germany; Witte de With, Rotterdam and De Vleeshal, Middelburg, Holland; Alexander and Bonin Gallery, Paula Cooper Gallery, Susan Inglett gallery and Esso Gallery, New York; AnneMarie Verna and May 36, Zurich, Switzerland; Galeria Pepe Cobo in Seville, Spain; Galleria Paolo Tonin, Turin, Italy; and most recently, the Taipei Biennial.
IMAGE:
Glen Rubsamen
Hopewell
Acrylic on canvas - , 2002
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