Jim Kempner Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of Greg Parker's minimalist paintings from September 23 to October 31. The gallery is located at 501 West 23rd Street at Tenth Avenue. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10-6; and Sunday from 12-5.
The beauty of Greg Parker's paintings lies in his ability to seduce the viewer with his elegance and order. Through the multi-layered manipulation of gesso, graphite and oil, Parker's painting medium exists eloquently between the boundaries of painting and drawing. He builds the painting's surface with 50 layers of sanded gesso then etches and scores expressive lines into an obsessively smooth finish. Parker's exquisite use of drawing and mark making in his paintings are the most obvious expression of both the physical and emotional unconscious. The surfaces of his paintings have a paradoxical history as well evidenced by the controlled handling of materials juxtaposed with a poetic unraveling of this order.
Parker's paintings are initially constructed in a very rational manner; both the proportions and the materials are consistent with our constructed environment. It is the artist's objective to build a specific form that ultimately becomes a contemplative environment. There is a quality of "order" and "precision" in both the composition and the mediums used . However, this sense of "order" and enforced rationality, is simultaneously abandoned as more expressive painterly issues evolve. Parker succeeds in capturing the expressive potential of light and reflected light. The highly polished planar surface allows for diverse interaction of light conditions. Graphite is applied to provide a reflective effect as well as reaffirming the objective physicality of the surface itself.
Based in Maine, Greg Parker recently had a solo exhibition at Miller Block Gallery in Boston, and has exhibited at the June Kelly Gallery in Portland and Between the Muses Gallery in Rockand, Maine. Parker was included in a major painting exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art, and in the Eighth Triennial at the Fuller Museum of Art last fall and, most recently, at The DeCordova Museum. His work is in the permanent collection of the Portland Museum of Art.