DC Moore Gallery Presents Max Kozloff: “The Atmospherics of Interruption”
DC Moore Gallery is proud to present, for the first time ever, an exhibition of paintings by noted art and photography critic Max Kozloff. Kozloff has long been highly regarded as a writer who also makes art. He has exhibited his color photographs at Holly Solomon Gallery, Marlborough Gallery, Steven Kasher Gallery, and most recently at the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 in the exhibition Max Kozloff: Critic and Photographer. Almost completely unknown until now, Kozloff has maintained a private practice as a creator of intense, moody, and nuanced paintings. Twenty-three works will be on view in Max Kozloff: The Atmospherics of Interruption: Paintings 1966-2018.
Kozloff developed his own pleasure in painting in the early 1960s, after many youthful visits to the Art Institute of Chicago and training at its school. His attachment to the brush was furthered by discoveries in the work of George Inness, Philip Guston, Cy Twombly, and Pierre Bonnard, whose achievement was the subject of his Master’s thesis at The University of Chicago. Kozloff’s approach to painting has always involved a fascination with the primacy of color. When a life change occurred, it transformed his method and compositions. As the artist has written:
“A physical condition inflected the course my painting was to take: a severe hearing disability. To compensate for this drawback, I intimated the idea that brushstrokes, marks and touches could have a musical import, as they are elaborated in an indefinite space. The body language of clouds came to inhabit that space, where faces sometimes appear, faces which I allowed and retained but did not intend.”
This new approach of atmospheric mark making is reflected clearly in the suite of four paintings in the exhibition inspired by the changing seasons. Rococo Spring (1998), presents curvilinear shapes resembling a human head and flowers in the central part of the canvas, amassed by layer upon layer of saturated, opaque colors that burst off the composition. Blue Probes Winter (1998) is a symphonic haze of pink and blue, framed by swaths of deep yellow, with subtle hints of abstracted foliage visible throughout the canvas.
Born in 1933 in Chicago, Kozloff moved to New York City in 1959. He was the art critic for The Nation from 1961-68 and contributing editor to Artforum from 1963 to 1974, and later Artforum’s Executive Editor through 1976. Recognized today as an eminent writer in the world of art history and criticism, he is known for insightful essays on both historic and contemporary art, and particularly photography.
Kozloff’s numerous publications include Cubism/Futurism (1973), Photography & Fascination (1979), The Privileged Eye (1987), New York Capital of Photography (2002), The Theatre of the Face: Portrait Photography Since 1900 (2007), Vermeer: A Study Contrasto (2011), as well as monographs on Jasper Johns (1969, 1972), Duane Michals(1991), Peter Hujar (1994), and Saul Leiter (2014). A book on Kozloff’s photography New York Over the Top, was published in 2013.
For more information, photographs, or to arrange a viewing, please call 212-247-2111 or email Sabeena Khosla at [email protected]
Contact: Abby Addams