Kenneth Noland: UNBALANCED

515 W . 27 th Street, New York

January 28 February 27, 2016
Opening Reception: January 28, 6 - 8pm

Its been on my mindwhat would something be like if it were

unbalanced? Its been a vexing question for a long time. But it took
the experience of working with radical kinds of symmetry, not just a
rectangle, but a diamond shape, as well as extreme extensions of
shapes, before I finally came to the idea of everything being
unbalanced, nothing vertical, nothing horizontal, nothing parallel. I
came to the fact that unbalancing has its own order. In a peculiar
way it can still end up feeling symmetrical.i Kenneth Noland, 1977

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce Kenneth Noland:

UNBALANCED on view at 515 W. 27th Street from January 28
February 27, 2016. The exhibition focuses on the American
Color Field painters iconic shaped canvases from the mid-to-late
1970s.

Noland was a pioneer of the shaped canvas, utilizing the forms as a means to generate a singular, unified
experience within a color field. The artist considered the compositions edge to be of equal importance to
the center, and his iconic bands of color, known as Rays would often populate only the outer reaches of
the canvas, as seen in notable works such as Ring, 1977 (pictured above) and Acute, 1977. His studies
under Bauhaus expatriate Josef Albers at Black Mountain College deeply influenced his intuitive
rather than theoretical approach to understanding color relationships. His palette was offbeat,
challenging, and often characterized by surprising juxtapositions. But the result was unexpectedly
harmonious, as encapsulated by essayist Alex Bacon in his text accompanying the exhibition where he
suggests that the calibration of the oscillating stripes causes the paintings to flex and shimmer as the
eye twists and turns across the sinuous but taut picture plane.

This is the first solo exhibition of the artists work at Paul Kasmin Gallery.

Image: Kenneth Noland, Ring, 1977. Acrylic on canvas. 85 3/4 x 62 1/4 inches; 217.8 x 158.1 cm. The
Estate of Kenneth Noland/ VAGA, New York/ Dacs, London, 2016.

MEDIA CONTACT: Anna Rosa Thomae; A R T Communication + Consultancy; ART@annarosathomae.com

ABOUT KENNETH NOLAND: (b. 1924, d. 2010)

Kenneth Noland first developed an interest in the emotional effects of color and geometric forms at Black
Mountain College where he studied under Ilya Bolotowsky from 1946-48. Known first for his target
paintings, Noland became a defining Color Field painter by applying a vast range of acrylic hues in his


visual language of chevrons, horizontal bands and diamonds, on diversely shaped canvases. In 1964, he
was included in the Venice Biennale and in 1977 the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum hosted his first
major retrospective that then traveled to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington,
D.C. and the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. Nolands work is held in the permanent collections of
prominent museums and institutions worldwide including; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
California, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Muse
National dArt Moderne, Centre National dArt et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris, the National Gallery
of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Upon his death in 2010,
the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum honored Noland with a memorial exhibition titled Kenneth Noland,
1924-2010, as a tribute to his significant contributions to the history of abstraction.



. Kenneth Noland in Diane Waldman, Color, Format and Abstract Art: An Interview with Kenneth Noland, Art in America (May/June
i

1977). Reprinted in Kenneth Noland: Paintings, 1958-1989 (New York: Salander-OReilly Galleries, 1989), 36.