GARY STEPHAN (New York, 1942). Untitled. 1989. Etching, copy 31/43. Signed, dated and numbered by

GARY STEPHAN (New York, 1942).
Untitled. 1989.
Etching, copy 31/43.
Signed, dated and numbered by hand.
Size: 35 x 47 cm; 70 x 56 cm (paper); 96 x 81 cm (frame).
Gary Stephan is a Brooklyn-born American abstract painter who has exhibited his work in the United States and Europe. He lives and works in New York and Stone Ridge, and is on the faculty of the MFA programme at the School of Visual Arts. He is represented by Susan Inglett Gallery in New York and Devening Projects + Editions in Chicago. Stephan, who has been exhibiting since the late 1960s, creates postmodern art in the form of idiosyncratically abstract paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs and video art. Stephan constructs paintings, abstract in form but painterly in nature, with a few visual tools and simple colours, which he then uses to undermine a coherent vision. Stephan surrounds his marks with moulded areas of negative space that destabilise figure/ground relationships. He also uses discontinuous areas of similar colours that are visually joined together to create the impression of a singular form. Part of the power of Stephan's paintings and drawings comes from his engagement with the architecture of his exhibition spaces in a way that reflects their formal structure. Because of their colour and workmanship, some of Stephan's paintings may appear austere, but the mere apprehension of their complex formal structure does not resolve their meanings. Stephan creates formal ambiguities that evoke feelings that are difficult to resolve. As an abstract painter, Stephan avoids the obvious seductive charms that painting offers. He is a rigorous formalist painter. Part of the strength of Stephan's work lies in the way it engages our imagination through ambiguities that elicit metaphors. All the feelings related to these various interpretations coexist in the emotional resonance of his paintings. His work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Drawing Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art and the Whitney Museum. Stephan has had solo exhibitions in New York at Susan Inglett Gallery, Bykert Gallery, Mary Boone Gallery, Hirschl and Adler and Marlborough Gallery; in Los Angeles at Margo Leavin Gallery and Daniel Weinberg Gallery. He had a retrospective exhibition at the Kienzle Art Foundation in Berlin from 13 September 2017 to 13 January 2018.