SAM GILLIAM – STARTING: WORKS ON PAPER 1967 – 1970
2019-04-15In the late 1960s, as he was engaging in the experiments that led to his breakthrough Beveled-edge and Drape paintings, Gilliam was also honing methods of working on paper with watercolors and ink that constitute an important facet of his practice 50 years later. Starting includes over a dozen important examples of these early works, which can be divided into three typologies: folded and stained works; works in which thicker, expressionistic application of medium dominates; and calligraphic ink and wash works created in response to, and as documents of, the architectural compositions of the Drape paintings. The exhibition provides a remarkably personal and intimate portrait of an artist discovering the full breadth of his powers. (It also features a typewritten manuscript of one of his poems from the era.) Its stylistic variety reflects the changing contexts and circumstances in which Gilliam was working, as well as his preternatural curiosity and fierce commitment to his practice.
The earliest works in the show, from 1967, feature dense arrays of blue, brown, and yellow applied in series of overlapping splatters. Their energy belies the scale of the compact sheets of sketchbook paper on which they are made, and their density of color allows Gilliam to maximize the potential of these small surfaces, resulting in works that hint at a surprising sense of monumentality. The natural rhythms that animate them come directly from the source, as they were produced by the artist en plein air. Gilliam would bring his baby daughter to Rock Creek Park, located near the family’s home in Washington, D.C., and work while she slept alongside him. He experimented with the relationship between color and movement, responding to the visual textures of the trees and the moods of the landscape, as well as encounters with then-contemporary paintings by Mark Rothko and Morris Louis, which he was seeing in galleries in New York.
Opposite – Untitled, 1967
Exhibition runs through to April 27th, 2019
David Kordansky Gallery
5130 W. Edgewood PL.
CA. 90019
Los Angeles
