Opening Reception: Saturday, September 10, 2011, 5:00pm - 7:00pm
The Frank Lloyd Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition that traces the development of Craig Kauffman's paintings from 1958 to 1964. A turning point in modern Los Angeles art, the paintings were sparse, clean, sensuous, yet intelligent. Kauffman absorbed influences from European painting as well as American abstraction. Even as a teenager, Kauffman had read Laszlo Moholy-Nagy's book The New Vision. By 1958, he had clearly begun to work in opposition to the dominant Abstract Expressionist mode. Kauffman has stated that his lean, lyrical look was a personal reaction to the heavy and thick abstract painting of the time.
In the early 1960s, after living for two years in Europe, Kauffman began a series of work that took forms from the earlier paintings. In small paintings on advertisements for shoes and lingerie, the artist explored sensual abstract forms and acknowledged the influence of Dada. He later recounted the "things I was interested in: kind of sexual, biomorphic mixture of mechanical things."
Transferring those images to paintings on flat plastic in 1962 and 1963, Kauffman integrated bold line and intense color with playfully suggestive forms. This exhibition includes works that were shown at Kauffman's 1962-3 exhibit at Ferus Gallery. Painted on the reverse of acrylic plastic and employing flat shapes with rounded contours, the works predict the artist's later vacuum formed pieces. As stated by art historian Susan Larsen, "They had the sleek good looks of a well-made machine, animated by strong sexual overtones. As such, they are late twentieth-century counterparts to the mechanic-erotic visions of Duchamp and Picabia."
Please click here to view the digital catalogue for the exhibition on an iPad: