D’Amelio Terras, New York
November 8, 2008 – January 31, 2009
D’Amelio Terras is pleased to present new, never before seen paintings by New York artist Robert Moskowitz. Moskowitz is widely known as a prominent figure in the New Image Painters, a group of artists named after the 1978 Whitney exhibition that marked a return to an overt figurative style in painting after the conceptual periods of Minimalism, performance and installation.
Moskowitz continues to work with a discrete economy of means. His paintings distill notions of figure and ground into those of solid and void. Caught between abstraction and representation, Moskowitz’s use of negative space suspends the moment of image recognition.
Previously, Moskowitz has addressed iconic subjects referencing art history, antiquity and New York City, notably: Rodin’s The Thinker, Brancusi’s Bird In Space, Greco-Roman discus throwers, Michealangelo’s Sistine Chapel and the Empire State building. Prior to catastrophic events, Moskowitz produced both World Trade Center and Tsunami images.
The latest subjects further implicate the commonplace and the extraordinary. Black and white paintings find form in a gin bottle, a baseball bat and an eagle’s wing. The eagle and the rearing horse escape the greater picture plane while the baseball bat leans back into the shallow depth of field. A symmetrical gateway of leafless trees, distant horizons and other abstract shapes ambiguously lead the viewer into or perhaps out of a new graphic language of ‘natural’ Americana.
Robert Moskowitz has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad since his first solo exhibition at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York, in 1962. Past solo exhibitions include: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Lawrence Markey, San Antonio, TX; Blum Helman Gallery, New York; Margo Leavin Gallery, Los Angeles; and Grob Gallery, London. Moskowitz is in numerous collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; and The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA.
