Ivan Chermayeff, Printed Face with Enrico Donati Hat Fragment, 2015, collage, 14 x 11 inches
March 3 – April 9, 2016
Opening reception: Thursday, March 3, 2016 from 6-8pm
Artist Lecture: Saturday, March 12 from 2-3pm
Pavel Zoubok Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition of collages and sculptures by Ivan Chermayeff (b. 1932), whose fine art practice and influential design career have saturated the visual landscape and profoundly shaped the post-modern era. Focusing on works made within the past decade, Collages & Sculptures celebrates the compositional strategies shared between the artist’s fine art and graphic design practices. Informed by a lifelong commitment to the interplay of tone and form, Chermayeff’s associative images manifest a deeply poetic sensibility and a rigorous graphic intelligence. He has famously said that the essence of design is “finding relationships,” a tactical approach to visual communication that similarly informs his collages and assemblages.
Composed of humble materials including envelopes, stamps and pebbles, Chermayeff’s extemporaneous compositions vibrate with the color and chaos of daily life. Emphasizing the textural and graphic variety of physical correspondence, his collages incorporate memos and mementos from the mailroom of his legendary firm Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv. These found elements are the basis of many works in the exhibition, where stamps become eyes and barcodes form mouths, offering each personage a distinct character. In another series, Chermayeff constructs an array of abstract, geometric collages from contiguous lines and planes of pure color. These ebullient yet economical works balance positive and negative space, shaping palpitating surfaces that appear to be freeze frames from a life’s pursuit of graphic dynamism.
Ivan Chermayeff’s work as a fine artist, designer and illustrator has been exhibited throughout the United States and abroad, with solo exhibitions at the Birmingham City University, England; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-On-Sea, England; Pera Museum, Istanbul, Turkey; Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut; Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington D.C.; Cooper Union, New York; and The Virginia Museum of Art, Richmond; among others. Chermayeff is the co-founder of Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv, one of the most iconic design agencies of the 20th Century. Recognized worldwide, their logos and graphic identities have been commissioned by clients including Chase Manhattan Bank, NBC, Mobile, PBS, The Smithsonian, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles) and The Museum of Modern Art. This is Chermayeff’s second exhibition at Pavel Zoubok Gallery.
Pavel Zoubok Gallery
531 West 26th Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10010
