June 1, 2007

Paul Kass Blurs Object and Image, Masculine and Feminine in Structure

Alfedena Gallery, June 15-July 28, 2007

Chicago—Alfedena Gallery is pleased to present a series of new constructions by Paul Kass in Structure, June 15-July 28, 2007. This is his first exhibition with the gallery. There will be a reception for the artist on Friday, June 15 from 5-8 pm. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

Since the mid-90s, Paul Kass has established a reputation as one of Chicago’s most idiosyncratic sculptors, blurring the physical and conceptual boundaries between sculpture and painting, the masculine and the feminine, the prosaic and the sublime. Using the hidden materials of the construction trades --- drywall tape, sandpaper, joint compound --- as well as the visible but banal materials from the domestic environment such as slipcover vinyl, Kass creates understated constructions whose ingenious and economic designs use the method of their constructions to contradict familiar perceptions. His work is a critical reinterpretation of post-Minimalism as he weaves, figuratively and literally, veiled social and cultural references into his formalist explorations of materials.

Dualities of the hidden and the exposed, vulnerability and protection are recurrent themes that Kass explores through a deconstruction of the modernist grid. His intuitive use of a soft geometry constructed from prickly materials provides a compelling dialogue, from the male perspective, with the seminal minimalist artist Eva Hesse whose own explorations of an organic vocabulary provided an alternative to the masculine hard edges of minimalist artists such as Donald Judd and Carl Andre. That Kass favors the intricate handwork of tearing, folding, stitching, his mass produced, utilitarian materials lends his work its unusual structure as he makes obsolete those familiar labels such as inside and outside, support and surface.

Kass’s Puff & Fluff, 2007, is a pair of life-size cones, one inverted, whose surfaces are layered with a pale skin of overlapping fringed paper. The paper is actually drywall tape, normally meant to smooth and hide joints. But Kass has used an office shredder to create fetishistic spires that both beckon and repel one’s touch. The feather-like surface of Puff & Fluff is both an ironic homage to modernist sculptor Constantin Brancusi’s classic work Bird in Flight as well as a deft extension of Eva Hesse’s subliminal vocabulary that transformed iconic forms into corporeal musings.

Roy G. Biv, 2006/2007 is a series of seven wall mounted works created by Kass that are a hybrid of drawing, painting, and sculpture. A partial display of this series was shown in Kass’s solo show at the Chicago Cultural Center in 2006, but this is the first time the complete work has been exhibited. Named for the mnemonic device used to recall the colors of the optical spectrum, Roy G. Biv uses the clear vinyl upholstery traditionally used to repel stains to “repel” easy visual interpretations of a sequential arrangement of vertical panels painted the colors of the spectrum. The vinyl becomes a taught, shimmering surface for irregular grids of white lines that Kass has drawn with a paint marker. Making marks from right to left to accommodate his left hand, Kass creates waves of quirky lines that address the invisible wavelengths of light that define the panels of color that lie encased in the protective vinyl. This work addresses the imperfection that lies behind the scientific “cleanliness” of quantifying natural phenomenon.

Yellow Painting, 2007, and Red Painting, 2004 reference the question, raised by painter Frank Stella’s black paintings from the late 50s, “When does a painting become a object?” Kass answers the question by literally taking apart and reassembling the canvas in both works. In Yellow Painting, the canvas is torn into strips that are riveted into loops that are interlocked to create an interwoven armature in which the yellow surface is barely visible on the inside edges. In Red Painting, Kass horizontally stacks torn strips of canvas that are held in place by long bolts. The resulting freestanding work resembles a wall, its one side emboldened by the intense read it was dipped in, while the other retains the natural hue of unprimed cotton canvas. Is it a painting or sculpture? Or does the work become architecture? In both of these works the traditional canvas ground has become a physical structure that extends the meaning of the work beyond the traditional perimeters of the canvas’s edge.

Born in Chicago in 1967, Paul Kass grew up in St. Louis. He earned a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990 and moved, shortly thereafter, to Chicago, where he presently lives and works. He has exhibited his work in numerous group exhibitions in Chicago since the early 90s and had several critically lauded solo shows at Beret International Gallery, one of city’s Uncomfortable Spaces – the collective of alternative galleries that showcased some of Chicago’s best emerging artists during the 90s. His work has been reviewed in the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Reader, New Art Examiner and Time Out New York.

To view images of the exhibition visit the web site, www.alfedenagallery.com.