Richard Anuszkiewicz: Three Dimensional Wall Reliefs and Sculptures from 1986-2012 Presented at David Richard Gallery In Santa Fe, New Mexico

David Richard Gallery will present Richard Anuszkiewicz, Variations: Evolution of the Artist’s Media 1986-2012, the gallery’s first solo exhibition for the artist that will feature three-dimensional artwork, including wall reliefs and pedestal sculptures. The exhibition will be presented from May 10-June 15, 2013 at the gallery located on 544 South Guadalupe Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501, phone 505-983-9555 in the Santa Fe Railyard Arts District.

Featuring sculptural works accompanied by drawings and paintings, the exhibition maps the evolution of Richard Anuszkiewicz’s art from 1986 through 2012 as he moves out of the purely two-dimensional plane and explores visual perception and three-dimensional space with the greatest economy of means, using only thin strips of wood or metal that are painted with just two or three carefully selected hues. Creating reductive structures, he takes advantage of a well known phenomenon in which the viewer’s mind completes the minimal constructs, envisioning a whole from the fragments by filling in the suggested flat surfaces or layers of overlapping planes. These structures are not only more architectural, but much simpler than his paintings, relying less on painting methods to create optical illusions and more on a literal approach aided by pure color.

In the Translumina series, the painted wooden strips on wall reliefs or pedestal sculptures create open structures that read as solid three-dimensional shapes. In the wall reliefs, the distances between the wood strips are graduated, which in combination with alternating hues model the rectangular shapes and create the illusion of rounded columns. Thus, he creates and maintains a tension between painting and sculpture to create the illusion of solid three-dimensional overlapping shapes. Another series of sculptures is still more reductive, whereby Anuszkiewicz uses only thin strips of metal constructed in a two-dimensional plane painted with one to four colors—mostly primary—such that they appear as line drawings. These sculptures are so open and transparent, they seem to float like boxes and cruciform structures in space.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with an essay by John Yau of New York.

Richard Anuskiewicz studied at Yale University with Josef Albers and at age 82, his art making still focuses on color and visual perception. His artwork has been featured in over 340 solo and group exhibitions since 1951 and is currently included in the international exhibition, Dynamo: A Century of Light and Motion in Art, 1913 - 2013 at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, in Paris (France) through July. He was included in seminal exhibitions that ushered in Op Art, such as Vibrations Eleven, Martha Jackson Gallery, New York, January 6 - 31, 1965 and The Responsive Eye, Museum of Modern Art, New York. February 23 - April 25, 1965 and early in his career, he was represented by the important Sidney Janis Gallery of New York. Anuszkiewicz’s art is included in the permanent collections of over 70 museums around the world including: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among others.

David Richard Gallery specializes in post-war abstract art including Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, geometric and hard-edge painting, Op, Pop, Minimalism, Feminism and conceptualism in a variety of media. Featuring both historic and contemporary artwork, the gallery represents many established artists who were part of important art historical movements and tendencies that occurred during the 1950s through the 1980s on both the east and west coasts. The gallery also represents artist estates, emerging artists and offers secondary market works.