Current Exhibition: COLOR/FORM

Dan Flavin – (to Don Judd, colorist) 3
Dan Flavin – (to Don Judd, colorist) 4
Donald Judd – Untitled

Donald Judd – Untitled

Ellsworth Kelly – 18 Colors (Cincinnati)
Ellsworth Kelly – Colored Paper Image XIII (Yellow Green Black Blue Orange)
Ellsworth Kelly – Colored Paper Image XIV (Yellow Curve)

Ellsworth Kelly – Colored Paper Image XIII (Yellow Green Black Blue Orange)
Ellsworth Kelly – Colored Paper Image XIV (Yellow Curve)
Ellsworth Kelly – Red-Orange (Rouge-Orange)

Ellsworth Kelly – Yellow Red-Orange
Ellsworth Kelly – Blue Black

Frank Stella – Itata
Frank Stella – Ifafa I

About this exhibition

Susan Sheehan Gallery is pleased to present COLOR/FORM, a group exhibition exploring the materiality of color. Featuring master prints by Dan Flavin, Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, and Frank Stella, the exhibition brings together artists who define shape and space through a polychromatic palette.

In the late 1960s, the ideological association of color with irony in Pop Art and subjectivity in Abstract Expressionism became the subject of growing criticism. The subsequent shift toward the use of color as a structural element was conceptually aligned with a declaration of its formal autonomy. 

Color serves as the sole source of variation in Donald Judd’s set of three sugar pine woodblocks, Untitled. On the subject, Judd wrote that “No immediate feeling can be attributed to color” in his 1993 essay Some Aspects of Color and Red and Black in Particular. Here, bright red and blue accentuate three-dimensional forms. Dan Flavin pays homage to Judd’s theory in (to Don Judd, colorist) 3 and (to Don Judd, colorist) 4, where saturated planes are both subject and object.

Frank Stella’s Ifafa I draws on the schematic program of his1964-65 Notched-V paintings and derives its color scheme from two early lithographs, Star of Persia I and Star of Persia II. Stella expanded his use of color in the early 1960s, a development that allowed him to pursue increasingly complex geometric configurations. Double Gray Scramble invokes one of the artist’s favored formats—the concentric square—to explore the tension between the flat surface and the optical effects it can produce. Stella’s treatment of the surface anticipates his evolution toward vibrant three-dimensionality. 

Ellsworth Kelly’s series of paper pulp prints, Colored Paper Images, attests to his sophisticated experimentation with color. Embedded within the paper itself, Kelly’s dyes are both medium and image. 18 Colors (Cincinnati) reflects Kelly’s more traditional engagement with primary and secondary hues as a means of exploring how visual experience is constructed. His varied and tactile approach to color speaks to the artist’s own rejection of the Minimalist label.