Ron Nagle
Linda Geary
Dan Flavin
Through August 24 - Color Shift at the Berkeley Art Museum. Was a time I would turn up my nose at a room full of abstract art (and did exactly that when I first encountered the Tate's Rothkos in person), but thankfully I grew out of it and began to appreciate what color could do all on its own. This wonderful group exhibition curated by Apsara DiQuinzio collects artists with widely varied practices around the theme of color, and the dialogues that emerge are fascinating and even quite moving at times. After all, one of the great powers of color is its ability to affect our moods. Robert Motherwell alludes to this in a quote on the panel for Rothko's Number 207 (Red over Dark Blue on Dark Gray), an unabashed centerpiece of the show:
...if Rothko had not existed, we would not even know of certain color possibilities in modern art. This is a technical accomplishment of magnitude. But Rothko's real genius was that out of color he had created a language of feeling.
The elders of abstraction are well represented with that Rothko as well as with work by Frankenthaler, Reinhardt, Pollock, and more, but DiQuinzio has also included an exciting number of contemporary (and local!) artists like Ron Nagle, Liam Everett, Ruth Laskey, and James Sterling Pitt. These latter practitioners move beyond the traditional painted canvas and into the realms of sculpture and textiles, pushing the boundaries of the very structure of color. I loved Everett's paradoxical musings on the topic, particularly given how he incorporates chance into his work by leaving treated fabric exposed to the elements:
Color is a great conspiracy. It is evasive by nature and functions optimally when left to dwell in the dark--beyond the gaze of idea and signal.