Sam Gilliam: The Flow of Color
Pace is pleased to present the second installment of its two-part Sam Gilliam exhibition at its Tokyo gallery from March 7 to May 6. Following a related presentation of Gilliam鈥檚 work at Pace's Seoul gallery earlier this year, this show will bring together watercolors and Drape paintings created by the artist in the last several years of his life, between 2018 and 2022.
Widely recognized as one of the boldest innovators of postwar American painting, Gilliam emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. Drawing inspiration from the use of color, line, and movement in Renaissance painting鈥攊n addition to the long history of formalism in modernist art鈥攖he artist nurtured a radical vision for his work that transcended the traditional boundaries of painting and sculpture, gesturing toward a new mode of making that would come to be understood as installation. Through his tireless experimentations with technique, gesture, materiality, color, and space, he continually reinvented his practice, pursuing a lifelong inquiry into the expressive, aesthetic, and philosophical powers of abstraction.
A series of formal breakthroughs early in his career resulted in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. 鈥淭he year 1968 was one of revelation and determination,鈥� the artist once said. 鈥淪omething was in the air, and it was in that spirit that I did the Drape paintings.鈥� Today, his work can be found in major museum collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Tate in London; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humleb忙k, Denmark, among many others.
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Pace is pleased to present the second installment of its two-part Sam Gilliam exhibition at its Tokyo gallery from March 7 to May 6. Following a related presentation of Gilliam鈥檚 work at Pace's Seoul gallery earlier this year, this show will bring together watercolors and Drape paintings created by the artist in the last several years of his life, between 2018 and 2022.
Widely recognized as one of the boldest innovators of postwar American painting, Gilliam emerged from the Washington, D.C. scene in the mid 1960s with works that elaborated upon and disrupted the ethos of Color School painting. Drawing inspiration from the use of color, line, and movement in Renaissance painting鈥攊n addition to the long history of formalism in modernist art鈥攖he artist nurtured a radical vision for his work that transcended the traditional boundaries of painting and sculpture, gesturing toward a new mode of making that would come to be understood as installation. Through his tireless experimentations with technique, gesture, materiality, color, and space, he continually reinvented his practice, pursuing a lifelong inquiry into the expressive, aesthetic, and philosophical powers of abstraction.
A series of formal breakthroughs early in his career resulted in his canonical Drape paintings, which expanded upon the tenets of Abstract Expressionism in entirely new ways. Suspending stretcherless lengths of painted canvas from the walls or ceilings of exhibition spaces, Gilliam transformed his medium and the contexts in which it was viewed. 鈥淭he year 1968 was one of revelation and determination,鈥� the artist once said. 鈥淪omething was in the air, and it was in that spirit that I did the Drape paintings.鈥� Today, his work can be found in major museum collections around the world, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Art Institute of Chicago; the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; Tate in London; and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humleb忙k, Denmark, among many others.
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