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"On display were several of the artist’s bodies of work including his Liquid Expressions series, a series of images of swirling, vibrant colors that expand from the painting surfaces onto their frames; as well as his popular sculptural relief works that explore shape, form, and color relationships, as well as text." |
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Jill SmithOpening Friday night at Ico Gallery in Tribeca, David Kastner’s multi-media exhibition entitled Free Art Tomorrow was well received by gallery-goers and collectors alike. On display were several of the artist’s bodies of work including his Liquid Expressions series, a series of images of swirling, vibrant colors that expand from the painting surfaces onto their frames; as well as his popular sculptural relief works that explore shape, form, and color relationships, as well as text. Of note in these series are: Telepath, a monochrome gold relief, the surface of which is embellished with a gold moth form and the word “Telepath”; and Tolerance of Incomprehensibility, another wall relief depicting a crimson skeleton sculpture framed inside an equally as red framed box. In addition to confronting formal issues related to color and space, such works seem to speak to concepts related to life, mortality, and spirituality as well. Untitled Sculpture, a large freestanding piece, centrally located in the exhibition space, resembles a cross between a multicolored totem pole and a set of stacked, jumbo-sized children’s building blocks. Such works represent the artist’s natural progression from his wall pieces, which similarly explore color relationships and three-dimensional space, to actual sculpture.
Most exciting, however, was the presentation of his newest body of work, a series of rectangular and triangular shaped fir frames within which he has stretched a variety of colorful embroidery strings. Reminiscent of Lyrical or Pop Abstraction, and Color Field painting of the 60s and 70s, Kastner’s work contemporizes these aesthetics through his subtle reinterpretation of art historical and contemporary cultural references. Using a fresh and modern palette, the artist investigates the mechanics of Michel Chevreul’s theory of “simultaneous contrast.” Suspended in adjacent lines, either vertically or at crosshatched angles, each colored thread occupies a color location that resides in juxtaposition with the color of each thread beside it. The result is the harmonic resonance and harmony created as light bounces off of these richly hued fibers. Some of these works are backed by crackled white surfaces, while the most successful ones are backed by mirrors that work to reflect light even more powerfully. Employing the physics of multi-dimensional layering, Kastner deftly produces works that play on the illusory perception of color space, rendering color fields—phenomena that he likens to “color auras”—that radiate and glow off the surface of the artworks, and that morph and pulsate as one moves around them. Visually-stimulating and intellectually satisfying, these works are quite compelling. Like Kandinsky and Ozenfant before him, these works transform color theory from the realm of mere physics, rendering it as something living, breathing, and even spiritual.
