Hoyland, Caro, Noland - Pace London

Kenneth Noland, Salute, 1963

Hoyland, Caro, Noland is at Pace London until 16 January 2016.
You wait years for a John Hoyland exhibition then two come along at once. Hot on the heels of the Newport Street Gallery's JohnHoyland: Power Stations: Paintings, 1964-1982 (continuing to 3 April 2016 - see below) Pace London  presents a selection of his work alongside his contemporaries and friends, Anthony Caro and KennethNoland. It's a triumvirate which harks back to the heady days of 1960s Post-Painterly Abstraction when all the talk was of colour, form, 'staining', 'flatness', 'openness and clarity' (Clement Greenberg) and 'shape as form' and the 'primacy of the literal over depicted shape' (Michael Fried). The present grouping calls to mind Michael Fried's championing in 1965 of Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Frank Stella and Jules Olitski. (Noland's and Stella's reputations seem assured - Stella currently being celebrated at theWhitney (a show I would love to see) - but Olitski has remained largely invisible, at least in the UK.

From the Pace Gallery press release:

Hoyland, Caro and Noland all emerged in the wake of the first generation of the New York School and sought to continue the legacies of their abstract forebears. Hoyland first met Noland in 1964 having already been deeply impressed by Caro's historic show at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1963, the year before his own appearance there with the influential 'New Generation' Exhibition. Caro's work had shifted ground dramatically during his time in the United States, and his capacity for inventing new forms had made Hoyland recognise the value of meeting the artists, including Noland, who had had such an impact on his friend...

The friendship of Caro and Noland had first begun in 1959 when Caro found his ideas sharpened by his encounters with the American artist, who was a leading figure among the post-painterly abstraction painters that critic Clement Greenberg was at that time championing. Already well established as an important colour-field painter and figure in the Washington Colour School, Noland left an indelible impression on his British peer with his commitment to the exploration of colour’s psychic and phenomenological effects through serialized forms, including horizontal bands.
Read review by Robin Greenwood.

John Hoyland, 5.11.65, 1965

John Hoyland, 22.1.67, 1967

John Hoyland, Ait 10.9.72, 1972

John Hoyland, 18.6.73, 1973

Anthony Caro, Survey, 1971-73

Anthony Caro, Stainless Piece C, 1974-75

Kenneth Noland, 3 by 3, 1963

Kenneth Noland, Silent Adios III, 1969

Kenneth Noland, Cove, 1976

Hoyland, Caro, Noland - installation view, Pace London

Hoyland, Caro, Noland - installation view, Pace London

Robert Irwin - Pace

Robert Irwin, Piccadilly, 2013

Robert Irwin is at Pace London until 17 August 2013.
I have long been aware of Robert Irwin (now 85) but cannot actually recall ever seeing any of his work - even though his evolution from an abstract painter into a leader of the Californian 'Light and Space' movement meant that he was working with a minimalist aesthetic that is exactly to my taste. I was, therefore, unprepared for the impact of the two 'site-conditioned' installations presented by Pace at their Burlington Gardens space. The first, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, occupies the huge ground floor gallery and features three aluminium black and coloured panels suspended from the ceiling that mirror three identical panels hovering over the floor - the effect of the light flooding in from the windows onto the reflective surfaces is a beautiful doubling and re-doubling of the space.
In the upstairs gallery Piccadilly comprises forty-seven green and white fluorescent tubes mounted in vertical groupings.
Gorgeous stuff. 

Robert Irwin, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, 2013

Robert Irwin, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, 2013

Robert Irwin, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, 2013

Robert Irwin, Piccadilly, 2013 (detail)

Rothko/Sugimoto - Pace Gallery

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes (4 October - 17 November) is the inaugural exhibition at Pace London. 
The juxtaposition of Mark Rothko's late black and grey paintings with Hiroshi Sugimoto's minimalist seascape photographs is, perhaps, an obvious pairing but, nevertheless, offers a rare and delicious prospect. (If, like me, you are excited by what Mark Brown in The Guardian predicts will be one of the 'greyest exhibitions' of the year!)
The exhibition comprises eight paintings by Rothko and eight photographs by Sugimoto. Rothko's paintings are all from 1969, the year before he committed suicide and in which he abandoned his characteristic use of colour for a limited palette of black and grey.
Sugimoto's seascapes are similarly limited in palette: 

“For several decades I have created seascapes. Not depicting the world in photographs, I’d like to think, but rather projecting my internal seascapes onto the canvas of the world. Skies now forming bright rectangles, water now melting into dark fluid rectangles. I sometimes think I see a dark horizon cutting across Mark Rothko’s paintings. It’s then I unconsciously realize that paintings are more truthful than photographs and photographs are more illusory than paintings.” (From Pace Gallery website.)

(NB the images here are merely representative of the artists' work and not necessarilly of works included included in the exhibition.)

Mark Rothko

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Mark Rothko

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Mark Rothko

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Installation view of Rothko/Sugimoto: Dark Paintings and Seascapes