Russell Maltz, Yellow Riser, 2018, acrylic and enamel on glass and wood, 96 x 3.25 x 4 inches.
Near Zero pairs together two generations of complex reductivity. Russell Maltz (b. 1952, Brooklyn, NY) and Peter Demos (b. 1981, Wheatridge, CO) are known for their unwavering dedication to sparse aesthetics and a restrained use of materials. They have a near-zero approach to making, employing few variables, resulting in work that is visually minimal and austere. Each artist is concerned with figure-ground relationships, perception, and balance. However, as pleasing and harmonious as these works first appear to be, they are unnerving at their core through perceptual sleight of hand. Their work requires patience, time, and attention to fully reveal their expert nuance of form and surface.
For over four decades, artist Russell Maltz has explored reductive abstraction through his use of found and painted industrial materials and their relationship to space and place. His materials are those that might be encountered on a construction site: industrial-grade glass plates and off-cuts of wood, blinding DayGlo paint straight from the can, all suspended from galvanized metal nails. Maltz’s needles are brutally straightforward. There is no attempt to hide the humble materials, but rather to transcend them. The verticality of his long, delicate needle works, some of which are eight feet tall and some as thin as 1.5 inches wide, enforce gravity, pulling the eye to the floor of the gallery, piercing through space. This assertive gesture, however, is simultaneously tempered by the tension of the pieces as they hover in the air, floating from the wall just above the floor, casting quiet shadows throughout the gallery. The over-saturated fluorescent hues applied to these works are arresting, allowing these slender pieces to hold vast open walls.
Demos’ large horizontal canvases rely on carefully constructed compositions consisting of borders, pseudo- rectangular shapes, and a horizon line in the center of the canvas that places us on unlevel ground. A triad of matte acrylic colors are applied by hand in hardedge shapes of black, white, and fluorescent magenta on dyed or raw unprimed canvases that appear as a fourth desaturated hue. Demos’ paintings are disguised as quiet. At first glance they pretend to have little to offer, but slowly reveal deftly orchestrated subtle tweaks and mischievous tricks. Perfect rectangles become skewed and trapezoidal, and the absolute horizontality of a border or horizon becomes torqued and bent. The expansive space of the raw canvas shifts from being a mere surface to a shape plunged far inside the picture plane.
Like holding one’s breath, both artists’ works exist in a state of tension and suspended time. In a culture where we are increasingly relying on fast-paced, image-based communication that disseminates information all at once, it’s refreshing to confront works that refute this economy of time and easy readability. There is minimal visual information in the works of these two artists, but a wealth of things to experience.
Shawn Powell
The exhibit was organized and curated by gallery artist Shawn Powell.