MINUS SPACE is pleased to present Pointing a Telescope at the Sun, a group exhibition highlighting abstract color painting by five highly-influential NYC-based artists: Gabriele Evertz, Vincent Longo, Doug Ohlson, Robert Swain, and Sanford Wurmfeld.  The exhibition is dedicated to the memory of Doug Ohlson (1936-2010) who passed away last year at age 73.

A core concern shared among these five artists is their pioneering investigation of color and its transformative effect on the viewer.  Their strategies with color range from the exhaustively systematic to the intuitively poetic to the radiantly visceral. The exhibition will feature one recent painting by each artist.

All five artists have also held decades-long associations with the renowned Art Department at Hunter College in New York City, one of the leading champions of color and abstraction – not to mention painting – among art schools in the United States.  With more than 150 years of combined teaching experience at Hunter among them, these five artists have mentored countless generations of artists and have profoundly impacted the artistic discourse on the local, national, and international levels.

Gabriele Evertz (b. 1945 Berlin, Germany) has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions internationally.  Her recent museum exhibitions include Columbus Museum, Heckscher Museum, Hillwood Art Museum, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA, Southwest Minnesota State University Art Museum, and Ulrich Museum.  Her work is included in many public collections worldwide, including The British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, Harvard University Art Museum, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, New Jersey State Museum, Parrish Art Museum, Stiftung für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst Zurich, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wilhelm Mack Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art. In addition to her painting practice, Evertz has also curated several major exhibitions over the past 10 years at Hunter College, including Visual Sensations: Robert Swain Paintings, 1967-2010; Presentational Painting III, and Seeing Red: An International Exhibition of Nonobjective Painting.

Vincent Longo (b. 1923 New York, NY) is a both a painter and groundbreaking printmaker.  He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally since the 1950s.  Retrospectives of his work have been held at The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, and Hunter College.  Longo has received awards from the National Endowments for the Arts, Cooper Union, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Institute for International Education (Fulbright).  His work is included in countless public collections worldwide, including The Brooklyn Museum, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, Fogg Museum, Guggenheim Museum, Library of Congress, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, National Gallery of Art, New York Public Library, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Yale University Art Gallery.

Doug Ohlson (b. 1936 Cherokee, Iowa; d. 2010 New York, NY) moved from the Midwest to New York City in 1961. Survey exhibitions of Ohlson’s work have been mounted at Bennington College, Hunter College, and Nell Gifford Stern Gallery. He has participated in countless museum exhibitions, including at Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, American Academy of Arts & Letters, The Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Arts, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Kunsthaus Zurich, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt, Museum of Modern Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Tate Gallery, and Whitney Museum of American Art.  Ohlson has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and the City University of New York.

Robert Swain (b. 1940 Austin, TX) has exhibited his work nationally and internationally for more than 40 years.  His work is represented in nearly 300 public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Walker Art Center, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Milwaukee Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Detroit Institute of Art, Everson Art Museum, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, among others.  He has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, College Art Association, and the City University of New York.  Swain was the subject of a major 45-year survey exhibition at Hunter College Times Square Gallery in 2010.

Sanford Wurmfeld (b. 1942 Bronx, NY) has exhibited his work worldwide in solo and group exhibitions since the late 1960s.  His immersive 360-degree painting Cyclorama has been recently exhibited at the Neuberger Museum of Art; Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom; Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Hagen, Germany; and Mucsarnok Kunsthalle, Budapest, Hungary.  He has participated in many museum exhibitions, including at the American Academy of Art and Letters, Carnegie Museum of Art, Dayton Art Museum, Kunsthaus Zurich, Long Beach Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Seattle Museum of Art, and Tate Gallery.  Wurmfeld has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, City University of New York, and Dartmouth College.  He has also lectured and published widely on the subject of color.

SUPPORT
We would like to thank Michele Toohey and Andrew Wojtas for their generous assistance with the exhibition. MINUS SPACE's programming is made possible by the support of The Golden Rule Foundation, as well as individual donors. We thank you!

ABOUT MINUS SPACE
MINUS SPACE is a platform for reductive art on the international level.

#pointingatelescopeatthesun