Alex Blau

ALEX BLAU

Paintings

November 8 - December 20, 2003

Mark Moore is please to announce Paintings, Alex Blau’s second solo exhibition. Blau’s hardedge paintings have unexpected associations: they’re sweet—like candy—as independent curator Sarah Tanguey has written; thoughtful and intricate—like Japanese product design—comments Jessica Hough, who included the artist in the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art’s recent touring exhibition Glee: Painting Now (2003).

Made from acrylic polymer on stretched linen, Blau’s paintings play off the colors and patterns of day-to-day consumer goods like potato chip bags, pop cans and candy bar wrappers. Blau co-opts for ‘high art’ purposes an appearance associated with disposable consumer products—itself originally co-opted from ‘high art’—an appearance designed by the executives of Madison Avenue to attract the eye, briefly, and be forgotten. Opening up a space for contemplation and beauty within a look more commonly associated with product advertising, Blau wryly comments on the historically wide-ranging possibilities of abstraction, cutting to the heart of a practice that can be both metaphysical—as Malevich and Newmann suggested—or straightforwardly utilitarian—if one thinks of László Moholy-Nagy (or even Donald Judd). Blau workis with an eye towards both ends of this spectrum, straddling it with a light pop sensibility.

Blau is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design. The exhibition is her second at Mark Moore Gallery. There will be a reception for the artist Saturday, November 8 from 5 to 7pm. For more information, please contact the gallery.