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Robert Berlind KyotoCochecton Robert Berlind KyotoCochecton January 9February 13 2016 Opening reception Saturday January 9 57 pm Lennon Weinberg Inc. 514 West 25 Street New York NY 10001 212-941-0012 www.lennonweinberg.com TuesdaySaturday 106 Rice Paddy with Reflected Trees 2 2012 36 x 72 inches oil on linen In 2011 Robert Berlind spent five months in Japan in and around Kyoto. An extensive group of paintings followed somewhat different from the work he has been known for in the past. For many years Berlind has painted lush passages of foliage or views of light-struck rippled water which occupy an undefined territory between realism and abstraction. Berlind is a realist with a strong modernist bent. His seductive close-up views of the natural world lifted free of circumstantial context stretch across the entire visual field often on very large canvases. The image ends abruptly at each edge. The space is shallow the picture surface is emphasized forms may overlap or recede but not very much. Depending on the imagery depiction can differ greatly. Though his focus has been deliberately limited over the years he has pursued a seemingly inexhaustible visual investigation while varying this approach. Berlind writes frequently about art. He has published articles about Mangold Held Zapkus Nozkowski and Pollock among other abstract artists and has much to say on the subject of abstraction. Japan presented Berlind with a new way of looking at the world. The unfamiliarity was important he says. There was so much new stimulus. Especially the architecturethe temple complexes and rice paddies right in the city in vacant lots. Five of the paintings in the current show depict young rice plants set out in neat rows in contained flooded areas. The rice is planted in the spring or early summer the size of the rice plants varies from one painting to the next showing slightly different stages of growth. There are sometimes glimpses of the planted earth a few inches below the waters surface. The water ripples slightly and may reflect trees or shadows of clouds. In these paintings the water is painted first to form the narrow curving shoots of the plants Berlind scrapes this surface while it is still wet to reveal the pale cadmium-green ground underneath. The effect is subdued since the colors are close in value. Arrayed in a grid the plants present a configuration that is itself abstract. It tends to read as a flat vertical-and-horizontal grid but thats not the whole story. Rice Paddy with Reflected Trees 2 2012 reiterates Berlinds fascination with reflections on water and retains a rich painterly texture. Theres a new perceptual complexity the pale grid of the tiny plants is superimposed upon the upside-down images of the big dark loosely painted trees that dominate the composition. The grid formed by the plants which we seem to look down on from above is slightly tilted. Perspective is suggested by the subtle convergence of the plant rows and the slightly diminished size of the green clumps as they recede. The vanishing point not in the picture but implied is to the right of center. Rice Paddy 5 also from 2012 and considerably smaller is edged at the top and to the right by reflections of trees and a tall pole secured by a wire. The vantage point is shifted the rows now converge slightly to the left. In Rice Paddy 2013 the frame of reflected imagery is gone and the brushwork is less active. The effect is almost monochrome. The grids recession now quite pronounced despite an overall impression of Rice Paddy 5 2012 28 x 32 inches oil on board flatness sets up a strong perspectival pull towards the upper right corner. In 2014 two more works in this group establish a heightened tension between surface and depth they both employ multiple perspectives and competing grids. In Rice Paddy with Cyclone Fence at 8 feet wide the largest work in the show the tilted receding plant grid is now seen through a dark green wire fence tightly painted and in sharp focus its emphatic presence visually identical with the picture surface and by implication near the observers eye. The plants and the water are close-hued and hard to read behind the overlaid fence. The fences diagonally oriented mesh grid contrasts sharply with all that lies behind it. Finally in Cyclone Fence Triptych also 2014 the diagonal wire grid is the main pictorial element. The plants are still there but faintly. With reduced imagistic detail these two cyclone-fence works seem to function primarily as abstractions. Two paintings in the current exhibition introduce the flaring pointed roofs of a temple gate-house an explicit and dramatic architectural motif. Architecture is seldom seen in Berlinds pre-Japan paintings. In the smaller of the two versions on view Nanzen-ji Sanmon 4 2013 the building looms up almost black seen from below against a wintry sky with a few clouds. Berlind says he simplified the structure in the course of many drawings suppressing most of its details. Tree branches leafless and pale gray stretch across its facade. In the larger Nanzen-ji Sanmon 2014 the upper reaches of the temple are brought somewhat closer grayed out as though seen through a mist. Here the foreground branches are greenish and buds are perhaps incipient. Nanzen-ji Sanmon 4 2013 20 x 32 inches oil on board Ginkaku-ji Coins 3 2012 28 x 32 inches oil on board The Japan paintings deal with subjects that reveal human intervention. Rice paddies are not nature nor are coins in a pool of water. Ginkaku-ji Coins 1 2011 and Ginkaku-ji Coins 3 2012 are downward views into a shallow pool in a stream that runs through a temple garden. The surface-vs.- depth duality recurs the water mirroring a bit of sky and a tree branch the reflective coins on the pools bottom signaling explicit depth. The majority of the Japan works were painted after Berlind returned to his studio in Cochecton New York. They are based on drawings watercolor studies and occasionally photographs he made while in Japan. Two paintings in the current exhibition depict the studio itself. In Studio Roof 4 2015 the artists upward gaze encountering a metal roof and a pair of skylights recalls the vantage point which produced the Nanzen-ji paintings. Studio Door 3 2014 is the most mysterious and spatially complex work in the show. Curving vertical lines on a white wooden door that forms the right half of the image represent a painting of trees done several years earlier the vertical white bar bisecting the door is a structural element. Near the paintings center we get a narrow glimpse into a dark interior at its far wall a window looks on the greenery beyond which also continues at the left side of the canvas. The exhibition presents a dialogue between two worlds. These two studio paintings retain the restrained manner of the Japanese works while adapting it to local subject matter. The current exhibition shows Berlind exploring new territory with compelling results. Elizabeth C. Baker New York 2015 Rice Paddy with Cyclone Fence 2014 48 x 96 inches oil on linen Cyclone Fence Triptych 2014 48 x 76 inches oil on board Rice Paddy 2013 56 x 64 inches oil on linen Ginkaku-ji Coins 1 2011 54 x 60 inches oil on linen Nanzen-ji Sanmon 2014 56 x 64 inches oil on linen Pond Grasses 2 2014 21 x 24 inches oil on board Studio Door 3 2014 36 x 60 inches oil on linen Studio Roof 4 2015 30 x 80 inches oil on linen Robert Berlind was born in Brooklyn in 1938. He received a BA in Art History at Columbia and an MFA at the Yale University School of Art in 1963 studying with notable faculty such as Alex Katz and Neil Welliver alongside fellow artists Rackstraw Downes Brice Marden Chuck Close and Janet Fish. Berlinds work began to appear in group and solo exhibitions in New York and elsewhere in the 1970s during a period of renewed appreciation for representational painting. He was included in several projects of The Artists Choice Museum a roving artist-run organization formed to support exhibitions of figurative and landscape painters. One such show took place at Tibor de Nagy in 1980. The gallery would later present four solo exhibitions several were reviewed in the New York Times as well as in Art in America. A survey exhibition originated at Wright State University in 1997 and travelled to other venues including the Neuberger Museum in Purchase New York. The Huntington Museum of Art in West Virginia exhibited his work in 2008. Berlinds most recent solo exhibition in New York took place in 2010 at David Findlay Gallery. This is his first at Lennon Weinberg. Berlind has taught at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale. He is Professor Emeritus at the School of Art and Design at SUNY Purchase. His critical writing has appeared in Art in America Border Crossings and The Brooklyn Rail. In 2013 he received the prestigious Art Writers Grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation in association with Creative Capital. He has twice received awards from the American Academy of Arts and Letters most recently the 2015 Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Award in Painting as well as grants from the NEA and the Pollock Krasner Foundation. He is a member of the National Academy and received their B. Altman Award for Painting in 2007 and the Award for Excellence in Painting in 2015. His work is included in the collections of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Colby College Museum of Art Neuberger Museum Farnsworth Museum and National Academy Museum. Robert Berlind and video artist Mary Lucier married in 1997. He died on December 17 2015 as this publication was going to press. Lennon Weinberg Inc.