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Jack Wright: A Unified Theory of PaintingPost an Event »
Opening reception: Friday, May 2, from 6:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Krowswork is very pleased to announce an exhibition of the painting of Jack Wright (1919-2003). This show, organized in conjunction with Wilson Art Service, brings the work of this luminous painter into the context of the Bay Area contemporary art world for the first time as a solo presentation in more than thirty years.
Jack Wright hailed from the Midwest, came to California in 1950, and soon became part of an avant-garde circle of artists living mostly in Marin County that formed around the British Surrealist Gordon Onslow Ford. Wright and other members of this group sought the visionary through the act of painting itself and were inspired by Surrealist automatism, Eastern calligraphic forms, and close observation of nature.
Wright's technique is characterized by his distinct square pointillist mark, which the artist used to create waves, lines, and portent shapes in gradations of rich, saturated color. These individual dot forms are often interwoven with sharp, curving arcs and energetic calligraphic squiggles that channel and emulate light itself. As these dots and lines wash over his canvases--which are often large, even mural-sized--the effect is one of shimmering vibration moving across the surface. Simultaneously, the layers of color and pattern extend the perceived depth of the painting as well.
Wright's paintings were shown throughout the years at various galleries and museums including the Walker Art Center, Betty Parsons Gallery, the Minnesota Museum of Art, and in a one-man show at the Everson Museum of Art. Nonetheless he mostly, and happily, worked in an isolated studio near Point Reyes, paying little attention to the public display of his art.
It was this seclusion that allowed Wright years of concentrated work, in which he was able to create his own unified theory of painting--one that invokes simultaneously Russian constructivism and Aboriginal sand painting, Light and Space and Abstract Expressionism, Vienna Seccession and New York graffiti, the mundane drip of world news and the profound flow of nature, quantum physics, and Native American spiritualism. He gives us the view to all of these at once; the divisions disappear. His friend and mentor Onslow Ford aptly wrote that, "Wright's paintings have moved through the surface and into an inner-world beyond . . . these pioneering paintings are playing a part in creating a more inclusive way to see."