OPENING RECEPTION: THURSDAY, NOV. 10, 6 - 8 pm
McClain Gallery is pleased to present WANDERWONDER, a selection of new paintings by Southern California-based artist Gary Lang. The exhibition will include Lang’s iconic circle paintings along with a selection of new Zipper paintings. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at McClain Gallery and the artist will be in attendance at the opening reception.
Lang’s tondo paintings vibrate with optical intensity as the concentric rings of saturated color transition into one another. The bands of color can change gradually or, at times, quite abruptly. Despite their unerring concentricity, Lang's paintings are made without guides or pre-drawn templates. The preliminary color palette is selected before he begins to paint, but Lang adjusts spontaneously during the painting process, embracing both chance and reason. “The composition is the result of expanding and receding color interactions evolving their own architecture and distinct ocular space. It’s the dividend of chance and disciplined abandon. Like a blindfolded juggler, I don’t see the painting until it is complete.”
The creation process for Lang is physical as well as meta-physical. He relies upon the rhythm of motion, stretch of his arms, and pattern of breathing to keep the brush strokes centered and parallel to one another. That meditative state is Lang’s most joyful place and the reason he comes back to the circular format. “My Circles are a vehicle for sharpening time, by drawing me into the precision of the moment, the exact present. The process extracts me from mental meandering or psychological states that cultivate anxiety in an effort to facilitate immediacy, intimacy and clarity of purpose. Simply put, the process of painting Circles draws infinity my way. It is when I feel most alert, and alive. It is my fountain of youth.”
Gary Lang received his BFA from California Institute of the Arts. He has participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program in NYC, and received an MFA from Yale University in 1974. In 1975 he was awarded a Fulbright/Hayes Travel and Research Grant, which brought him to Barcelona for two years, after which he settled in New York City. Lang has had more than seventy solo exhibitions in the United States, Austria, France, Japan, The Netherlands, and Spain. Lang's work has been the subject of numerous museum exhibitions, including the McNay Museum in San Antonio, TX, the Museum of Art & History in Lancaster, CA, and the Hague in the Netherlands. He now lives and works in Southern California.