McClain Gallery is pleased to present Gary Lang: Fourfold Glow, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. This group of square paintings features the artist’s characteristic improvisations of color, each work crafted painstakingly via concentric squares of color that bring focused attention to the very center of each piece. The paintings glow and pulsate in tandem, each with its own light and energy radiating from within. The show is a riot of color and a singular ocular experience.
In his Concentric Squares, Lang’s bands of color sometimes transition softly from one hue to the next, and at other times abruptly shift from cold and dark to hot and bright, creating tension on the surface of the paintings and within the eye of the beholder. The pieces oscillate between their rhythmically ridged surfaces and visual depth. CENTERS #8 from 2020-21 features a white to gray gradient; it looks like a deep, darkening pit that falls away from the surface of the painting and into fathoms. In its center, a neat succession of pink-orange-green and back to dark gray squares seems to float up from the depths, an enchanting trompe l’œil employing a method – abstraction – which normally doesn’t make use of the technique. The effect is vertiginous and yet distinctly painterly.
Lang paints each band of color in succession, working from the outside edge toward the center. Each hue is taped off for a crisp edge and then covered up for the application of the next. The entire piece is only revealed at the end, when Lang removes the tape. In other words, while the artist is working he cannot see the full work, and he experiences the result of his effort the same way the viewer does: all at once, as a discrete object, independent of its maker. He does not look as he paints; instead, he lets chance take the lead.
CSMG #4 from 2022-23 softly drags the eye from its pastel edges toward an acidic orange glow. The squares appear to twist around themselves as a sharp lime green band, about midway to its darker center, doesn’t quite line up with the others. But once the eye reaches the middle, suddenly it feels as if it bounces off the surface: the center’s three primary colors vibrate against each other, almost absorbing light in their flatness as though the nebulous glow of the painting is suddenly shut off. Lang aims to catch a certain luminosity in his work, and the effect of CSMG #4 is an excellent illustration of the way he achieves it.
The process of deciphering colors against each other has been a career-long exploration for the artist. In CS 48 #2 from 2024, the largest work in the show, the eye lands on the painting sharply and gets caught in the movement caused by colors contrasting and shifting beside each other. The bright pink of the edges retreats back behind a deep Klein blue. White bands against black give the impression of rushing forward, and a pale yellow could almost look green against the powder blue that surrounds it. Each painting is a thoughtful symphony in which color plays all the instruments; Lang is a director, a tender, leading his medium to a structured radiance.
GARY LANG (b. 1950, Los Angeles, California) is a painter, lecturer, sculptor, and muralist based in Southern California. Lang’s work comprises several long-standing series including Concentric Circles and Squares, Zipper Paintings, Stars, Word Paintings, and a sculptural practice consisting of ritualistic amassed objects. Lang is best known for his tondo paintings, which evolve without guides or templates, embodying a harmonious blend of spontaneity and intention.
Lang is an internationally exhibited artist. His work has been featured in more than seventy solo exhibitions in the United States, Austria, France, Japan, The Netherlands, and Spain. He studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, earned a BFA degree in 1970 form the California Institute of Arts and an MFA degree from Yale University in 1975. In the 1970’s Lang lived in Barcelona, Spain on a Fulbright/Hayes Travel Grant; he later lived in New York and Los Angeles before settling in Ojai, CA. Lang has completed murals in La Jolla, California and outdoor sculpture in New Haven, Connecticut. He has been a lecturer at the University of California in Los Angeles, Claremont Colleges of California, and Yale University.
Lang’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Portland Museum of Art, ME; and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY; Contemporary Art Museum, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL; Detroit Institute of the Arts, Detroit, MI; Gemeentemuseum den Haag, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI; Museum of Art and History, Lancaster, CA; Plains Art Museum, Moorehead, MN; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; Museum of Art Contemporain, Angers, France. In 2015 he received the Arts & Letters Award, and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in NYC, and in 2017 he received the Francis J. Greenburger Award. Lang currently lives and works in Ojai, CA. Lang is represented by McClain Gallery in Houston where he has had two solo exhibitions (2016, 2025) and has been included in many group shows.