GARY LANG - Ace Gallery

GARY LANG
OUT STANDING TIME
Portrait of Gary Lang by Donna Granata
Focus on the Masters Portrait Series, 2008
GARY LANG
OUT STANDING TIME
Essay by David Pagel
Introduction by Stanley I Grand
August 15–October 12, 2008
Rosemary Berkel and Harry L. Crisp II Museum
Cape Girardeau, Missouri
Introduction
Stanley I Grand
“O
ut Standing Time” is the third Gary Lang
solo exhibition with which I’ve been
associated. The first, an installation at the Madison
[Wisconsin] Art Center, now the Madison Museum
of Contemporary Art, took place in 1987. In 1997 I
organized a mid-career retrospective at the Sordoni
Art Gallery, Wilkes University. It therefore seems
fitting that my final exhibition at the Rosemary
Berkel and Harry L. Crisp II Museum, Southeast
Missouri State University, is a Gary Lang exhibition.
Lang’s Sordoni retrospective surveyed works from
1975-1997, from Barcelona Painting (1975), a
Pop-infused, painted collage completed while on
a Fulbright/Hayes fellowship he received after
earning his M.F.A. at Yale, to his Los Angeles
Weapons (1980), to Plaid Painting (1989), which was
followed by Mirror and Dream Twister Paintings in
the 1990s along with the increasing monumental
tondi such as Grand Circle (1997) with a diameter
of 113 inches. By this time Lang had established
his reputation as an abstract painter and superb
colorist creating primarily all-over compositions and
working in series.
Lang created his rectangular and square paintings
by laying down a single, straight line of color from
the top of the canvas to the bottom. He then
rotated the canvas 90 degrees and painted the
second line from top to bottom. He continued
thusly, rotating the canvas after each stroke until
he’d finished and only a single line remained
uncrossed. Dividing Time, Lang’s 13-minute video,
which is part of this exhibition, is a digital version
of this same methodology.
In these paintings, Lang experimented with the
qualities of his lines. Initially, he’d tape the areas to
be painted, which produced a hard-edged line with
a hint of violence—the result of tearing away the
tape. Later he eschewed this mechanical process
in preference for a hand-drawn line full of subtle
variations, imperfections, and humanity. The Circle
Paintings, on the other hand, consisted of concentric
circles that either radiated outward from the center
like expanding gyres or else sucked the viewer into
the heart of a tornado. All pulsated, like a heart.
In 1998 Lang had been living in New York City
since 1985, he was forty-eight, married to artist
Ruth Pastine, and the father of an infant son.
He was thinking about going home to southern
California, and he painted Native.
Lang worked on Native—a large painting which
David Pagel brilliantly analyzes in his contribution
to this catalogue—for eight months during which
time he also completed three small paintings—two
Still from Dividing Time: Profiles 1, 2008
Courtesy Quint Contemporary Art
of which—Enchanced 3 (Niagra) and Eye Lights—are
also in this exhibition. Native was to be a fertile field
that Lang cultivated for many years. For example,
works such as Diamond Painting 12, which is
illustrated in the catalogue but was not available for
inclusion in the exhibition, explore certain themes
inherent in Native. Specifically, we see the new
emphasis on verticality combined with the repetition
of regular geometric elements. These are clearly
departures from the all-over Mirror compositions.
Thus Native and the other 1998 paintings
simultaneously represent directions taken and not
taken. The formal geometric qualities were explored
in the series of Diamond Paintings, but other aspects
were not investigated until a decade later when,
finally settled in his Ojai, California studio, he was
able to pick up the threads first explored in Native.
Lang has always been a methodical painter, who
develops his ideas through multiples. In this
exhibition, he is both more confident and less
calculating. He knows that the works in “Out
Standing Time” are either a harbinger or a dead end.
Time will tell.
“Out Standing Time” is Lang’s attempt, as he says, to
“possess what you cannot possess.” Like water, which
is a powerful subtheme in Lang’s recent paintings
(Smoking Waters, River Dreams, River Painting Series:
Agua Particular), time is infinitely protean and
powerful. In these works Lang’s jazz sensibility is
at play as he rifts between the lyricism of Smoking
Waters and the tighter structure of Agua Particular.
For Gary Lang painting is a way to sidestep
mortality, step into infinity, and out stand time.
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This exhibition is dedicated to the memory of
Placide and George Schriever, late of New York
City, and long-time supporters of the museum at
Southeast Missouri State University. In addition
to generous gifts of works of art made during their
lifetimes, they bequeathed a small endowment that
helps underwrite an annual exhibition.
Several gallerists have assisted with this exhibition.
Mark Quint and Ben Strauss-Malcolm, of Quint
Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California, provided
the video Dividing Time: Profiles 1. Edward Cella Art
+ Architecture, Santa Barbara, provided the Hybrid
Line Variations. Thanks to Douglas Chrismas and
Jennifer Kellen, ACE Gallery, Los Angeles.
Kate Schaefer, Concord Printing Services, Cape
Girardeau, designed the catalogue. Barry Thornton,
Concord Printing Services, oversaw the production.
I have had the pleasure of working with Kate and
Barry on all the catalogues produced at the museum
since 2000 and personally thank them for their
commitment to excellence. Master printer Bob
Stagner printed the catalogue on a Heidelberg press.
Bill Dewey of Santa Barbara photographed the
works in the catalogue. Donna Granata provided
the portrait of Gary Lang. We owe special thanks to
Professor David Pagel for his insightful essay.
The exhibition would not have been possible without
the wholehearted support and efforts of the Crisp
Museum Staff: James Phillips, Curator of Collections;
Ellen Hahs, Curator of Education; Peggy Haney,
Museum Specialist; Gary Tyler, Outreach Specialist;
and Krystal Floyd, Student Intern.
In addition the Crisp appreciates the ongoing
support of: Dr. Kenneth Dobbins, Southeast
Missouri State University President; Dr. Jane
Stephens, Provost; Dr. Frank Barrios, Dean of the
College of Liberal Arts; Dr. Gary L. Miller, Director
of the Holland School of Visual and Performing
Arts; and Professor Patricia Reagan, Chair Art
Department. We also appreciate Professor Ronald
Clayton’s assistance in re-stretching Native.
The College of Liberal Arts and the Art Department
provided support for me to visit Gary Lang and
David Pagel in California. The Missouri Arts
Council, a state agency, provided financial assistance
for this project.
Gary wishes to thank Tom Rosenberg, Executive
Producer, Lakeshore Entertainment, for
his longstanding, unwavering support and
encouragement, and to acknowledge Ruth Pastine
for her constant counsel.
I thank Gary, Ruth Pastine, a wonderful artist in her
own right, and their children Chance and Sage for
the hospitality extended to me when I visited their
home in Ojai. As I noted earlier, I have followed—
and from time to time played a small part in—Gary
Lang’s career for over twenty years. My respect for
him has only grown.
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Connoisseur of
Happenstance
David Pagel
M
ore than a decade separates the earliest
painting in this exhibition from the dozen or
so others in it.
In 1998, Gary Lang painted Native, a nearly tenfoot-square canvas made up of gently undulating
strands of asymmetrical, sharply demarcated
diamonds and triangles in a rainbow of colors that
samples the spectrum and shifts, in chromatic
intensity, from blazing lemon yellows and dazzling
olive-greens to cool ocean blues and supersaturated
burgundies while leaving plenty of room for an
exquisite variety of delicate dove grays, faded sunsetsky pinks, icy whites, and warm midnight blacks,
among a seemingly endless list of oddly sophisticated
tertiary tints. In a sense, Lang’s painting is simple.
Comprised of only four elements—color, shape,
line, and size—it sticks to the basics of painting and
forgoes depiction, reference, illusion, and narrative to
create the possibility that viewers see it for what it is:
an occasion for an engaging experience of something
unlike anything else out there yet connected to the
swirling stew of particles, atoms, and molecules that
make up absolutely everything out there—from
the tiniest micro-organisms that thrive in a drop of
water to the inconceivable vastness of deep space,
in which entire planets, solar systems, and galaxies
are dwarfed by the infinity of the cosmos. In this
sense, Native is anything but simple. It’s among the
most perceptually nuanced canvases of its time, an
age filled, on the one hand, with images inspired by
the easy-to-read techniques of graphic design, and,
on the other, by the sentimentality of excessively
personalized story-telling, often in the slapdash style
of homemade cartoons and grungy comics. Lang’s
combination of pedestrian, everyday simplicity and
mind-blowing complexity is the heart and soul of
Native, as well as the animating force that pulses
through the paintings he made ten years later, all of
which amplify the idiosyncratic dynamics of Native,
heightening and intensifying its sweet, swaying
rhythms and jaunty, eye-popping zigzags in their own
maverick fashion. Together, Lang’s 1998 painting
and its 2008 offshoots take eccentricity from its place
on the fringe of social conventions and locate it in
the center of things—where life is lived fully and
furiously, with no looking back and with little regard
for the rules.
A large part of Native’s magic resides in the way
that Lang has managed to transform the most
basic geometric shapes and most rudimentary
painterly activities—putting down one color after
another, in shapes that require no more manual
dexterity or technical expertise than is commonly
found in the hands of a six-year-old—into a
deliciously orchestrated instance of being alive
to the moment: of being acutely aware of one’s
surroundings, stimulated by the visible resplendence
of their myriad details, and, simply put, thrilled
by the inexplicable richness and vividness and
unpredictability of sensory experiences so simple
we ordinarily overlook them in our haste to make it
through the day by getting the job done with as little
fuss as possible. The bold, initially rambunctious
painting slows down the rapid-fire pace of modern
life and repays every minute you spend with it,
discovering its sensuous rhythms and offbeat pulse.
Native is a generous painting and it immediately goes
to work on the perceptual machinery of viewers by
never letting your eyes rest, for long, anywhere on
its surface. Even eyes accustomed to the whiplash
immediacy of computers and the instantaneous
appeal of the Internet are drawn, like moths to
flames, to Lang’s wall-size painting. It neither
presumes that viewers must wait patiently for art
to reward them, nor reveals all its secrets in a splitsecond, leaving no reason for second and third looks,
much less the slowly unfolding pleasures of sustained
scrutiny. Instead, Native gets your attention quickly
and then does something interesting with it. It’s a
painting that’s made to be lived with, to be seen in as
many moods as you bring to it, over and over again.
No real focal points organize its surface into anything
like a typical pictorial composition, with some areas
or points of interest given greater priority than
others. Likewise, no color or shape is any more—or
less—important than any other. Nearly all of the
diamonds and triangles that link up vertically across
the expanse of the canvas are related to the ones
immediately above and below them coloristically,
by gradual shifts in tint, like the ones that make up
color wheels, hardware store paint-chip arrays, and
the light-to-dark gradients that form the grounds of
many of Ed Ruscha’s enigmatic Pop paintings.
Gerhard Richter’s color-chart paintings also come to
mind, especially when one recalls that the German
artist never intended them to celebrate the impersonal
arbitrariness of modern life but sought, in the potential
endlessness of their grids, a harmonious expansiveness,
a sort of unconventional composure and wholeness,
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replete with its own look and logic. Native takes this
intuitive strand that runs through Richter’s hard-edge,
geometric paintings and runs with it, multiplying it
exponentially and weaving it into dynamic fields whose
meandering, push-pull opticality recalls beautifully
woven textiles, suffused with the glowing, desert-meetsthe-sea Mediterranean light of Southern California. If
Navajo blanket-makers wove the flowing, wind-blown
robes depicted in many Baroque paintings, these fabrics
might convey the same feel that the loosely interlocked
planes and spaces in Native do, which also combine the
drifting sensuality of underwater kelp beds with the
crisp contours of stained glass windows, especially when
natural light pours through their pieced-together planes
and becomes luscious, three-dimensional color.
The all-over, every-part-counts equality of Lang’s
painting bespeaks an ethos of democratic evenhandedness. This unprivileged sense of come-one,
come-all accessibility governs its relationship with
viewers, who are never presumed to be scholars or
experts but simply curious folks with a taste for visual
adventures and a propensity for see-for-yourself
experiences. That’s the bedrock of philosophical
skepticism—of not taking anything on faith or
authority but of measuring it against one’s self,
according to how it works in the here and now,
according to one’s own needs and desires. It’s also
profoundly American, in the sense that pedigrees and
credentials matter less than pragmatic, matter-of-fact
results, always well-served by a solid work ethic—no
short cuts or slickness or glibness or trickery.
At the same time, Native embodies an ethos of
winging it—of working without an exact plan, of
improvising, taking chances, making mistakes, making
changes, and going with the flow—in short, in
adapting to what is already on the canvas by subtly (or
not so subtly) adjusting the temperature and density
of the colors and the shapes and the sizes of the areas
they cover. Richard Diebenkorn made great paintings
by recording the drama of these adaptations, recalibrations, and re-alignments. So did Henri Matisse,
with more ease and grace. In contrast, Lang has made
a great painting by downplaying the significance of
these compositional decisions, covering over, almost
completely, colors and shapes with others that create
more effective mixes of dissonance and harmony. But
he is not a fussy painter or finish fetishist. If you look
closely you can see painted-out passages, previous
colors, and ghostly traces of earlier versions. Even
so, the overall thrust of the painting is not to present
viewers with a history of its making—a palimpsest
of rough drafts or abandoned prototypes, of missteps
and fixes. The point is to leave viewers with a fully
resolved painting, a finished work in which the artist’s
decisiveness and confidence are embodied. This
makes for a riveting object jam packed with fresh
discoveries that let you see the world with fresh eyes.
Lang’s painting is more concerned to turn the present
toward the future than to turn it back toward the past,
where memory and melancholia reign. That is part of
its dyed-in-the-wool, deeply American optimism, its
sense of possibility and openness and excitement, not
to mention its conviction that every single instant has
the potential to be unique, and, equally important,
not explained by the moments that led up to it, but
unpredictable, mysterious, free.
The irregular, handmade triangles and diamonds in
Lang’s painting create an all-over saw-tooth or zigzag
pattern that is not really a pattern because no part
of its surface repeats any other. Every square inch of
the canvas’s vibrant, dynamically animated surface is
different from every other square inch—of which,
incidentally, there are 12,769. The look, feel, and
impact of every bit of Native are as unique as a
snowflake and as singular as a fingerprint. And, like
those ordinary, organic forms, the smallest sections
of Lang’s painting belong together not because they
exactly match one another—like the mass-produced
objects and standardized items that make up so much
of the modern world—but because they stand apart
from one another yet share sufficient similarities—in
size, shape, and rhythm—to be grasped as parts
of a larger whole, which is a whole lot greater
than the sum of its parts. Native is energized by a
terrifically reciprocal relationship between standalone uniqueness and go-with-the-flow teamwork, of
simultaneously standing out—as an individual—and
fitting in—as a member of a larger group. As a
painting, it is a silent yet eloquent argument for
multiple perspectives and an implicit critique of the
commonly held belief that individuals and groups are
intrinsically opposed.
Lang painted Native not long after his son Chance
was born. His daughter, Sage, followed two years
later. In 2001, Lang moved with his wife, Ruth
Pastine, from New York City to the countryside
just outside Ojai, California, approximately 70
miles north of Los Angeles. Moving from motel to
apartment, searching for the right house, he painted
when he could, eventually in a makeshift studio that
now houses a ping-pong table and serves as storage
for outdoor toys and cardboard boxes filled with
the stuff left over from previous lives. From 2004 to
2006, while Lang designed and built a freestanding
studio, he did not paint on canvas. As soon as his
studio was finished, he set to work, without a clear
plan but with the kid-in-a-candy-shop excitement
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of someone who had been away from the work he
loves for too long.
The first five paintings he made, Smoking Waters 1,
2, 3, 4, and 5 do not pick up right where Native
left off so much as they take its best effects and run
with them, solidifying and amplifying the 1998
painting’s funky rhythms by compressing them
into body-sized spaces. Each of the new canvases
measures approximately 82 × 48 inches, about the
size of a small doorway. In a sense, Lang’s Smoking
Waters paintings are to Native what Native is to
Richter’s color-chart paintings: complex, increasingly
sophisticated elaborations on the earlier works’
intuitive attempts to make each of the elements of a
painting simultaneously stand on its own and cohere
into a larger, harmonious whole.
Lang’s Smoking Waters paintings transform Native’s
overall saw-tooth structure (of crisp, diagonal lines
formed by abutted diamonds and triangles) into
an even more irregular, unpredictable, and kinky
configuration—a sequence, but not, emphatically, a
series—of meandering paths alternating with slightly
wider spaces, all vertically oriented. Where Native
consists of more than a thousand little jagged shapes
that feel fractured or faceted yet still interlock to form
a consistent, if piecemeal, patchwork, crazy-quilt-style
plane (and leave color alone to open the impression
of shallow space), Lang’s Smoking Waters paintings
consist of 40-50 vertical elements. Color and shape
work in concert to open up larger and deeper spaces.
If the wide and narrow bands of subtle gradients of
shifting colors that stutter and stagger and stammer
across the surfaces of Lang’s sizzling paintings were
straighter, like Tim Bavington’s air-brushed canvases,
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or consistently curved, like Sol LeWitt’s hand-painted
panels that evoke sinuous sound waves, it would make
sense to call his works stripe paintings. But Lang’s
compositions are too idiosyncratic, out-of-step, and
off-kilter to be described so conventionally. It’s also
hard to say which elements of his paintings are lines
and which are spaces. In other words, the curiously
complex configurations that make up the paintings’
surfaces make it clear that the difference between a
wide line and a narrow space is neither consistent nor
defensible—and that one can be the other, depending
upon a viewer’s perspective. Traditionally speaking,
lines are contours that demarcate shapes. In contrast,
Lang’s lines do not describe the edges of shapes, like
the lines on a map, so much as they link two disparate
spaces—moving through distinct fields or expanses
by holding them together. They are not, properly
speaking, lines, but very narrow spaces. Like the
spaces they join, they change color—gradually, subtly,
delicately. They also change direction—abruptly,
unpredictably, and so often that they seem to be
animated by their own internal energy. They also
require that a viewer’s eye has to travel three or four
times the distance a more direct path from edge
to edge of the canvas would take. And the wider
areas of loosely brushed color they abut sometimes
appear to be solid, like moss-covered walls, sunfaded stucco, or the hulls of ships. At other times
they seem to be craggy cracks in the picture-plane,
broken openings onto shallow pools of cool water,
or sudden glimpses of azure skies, or the darkness of
the abyss, or the sublime infinity of deep space. In
every case, the uncertainty of knowing what you’re
looking at multiplies before Lang’s Smoking Waters
paintings, which replace the vestiges of geometric
regularity that forms the skeletal structure of Native
with a compressed expanse of quirky particularities,
seat-of-the-pants reversals, adamant idiosyncrasy,
and unpredictability for its own sake. It is as if
structurelessness itself is the organizing principle
of these electrifying paintings—not the vague,
amorphous indistinctness of hazy atmospheres and
trendy blurriness, but the crisp rigorousness, vivid
thereness, and dramatic decisiveness of singular
choices of color, line, and shape. Lang’s paintings are
a thrill to behold and a nightmare to describe: They
derail language with the best of them, forcing viewers
to look closely because there is no handy category to
fit them into or ready-made description to apply to
their powerfully original syncopations.
Their palette is more playful, confident, less organic
or naturalistic than synthetic and super-charged.
A wide streak of comic verve runs through them,
making for works that initially look hyperactive,
even manic, but gradually settle into joyous
celebrations of highly stimulated serenity: not the
relaxing placidity of calm contentment but the
excitement of witnessing—and being part of—a
situation when everything falls into place, effortlessly,
serendipitously, and with little regard for one’s
intentions or will. Lang’s compositions are also more
exuberant—each painting is a cornucopia of nooks
and crannies. Like a labyrinthine maze without the
dead-ends, claustrophobia, or sense of entrapment,
these paintings revel in the sensibility that seeks
out-of-the-way places, the love of stumbling onto
unexpected surprises as one makes one’s way through
life. They are the visual equivalent of off-the-beatentrack treasures or hole-in-the-wall favorites—not the
big-budget, get-the-headlines sensations of massmarketed spectacles or the exploitative appeals to
the lowest-common-denominator in all of us, but
quiet, do-it-yourself discoveries of a connoisseur of
happenstance, of someone wise enough to know that
too much control or direction or assertive willfulness
defeats one’s purposes and ruins the magic because it
eliminates the mystery and the wonder and the sense
of discovery that only comes on its own terms, by
chance as it were.
Lang’s Smoking Waters paintings are more
imaginative and freeform than anything he has
made. A goofy, even cartoon directness suffuses their
surfaces, which sometimes evoke digital pixilation
gone nutty, giant jigsaw puzzles whose parts have
melted and run together, like ice-cream cones on hot
summer days, or the endless, interconnected lines
that form the contours of ancient Mayan reliefs,
sculptures, and carved facades, not to mention the
vines and roots growing over them. On the whole,
Lang’s paintings from the last eighteen months
reflect greater maturity than his painting from ten
years ago. This is not to suggest that Native is an
immature work, just to indicate that its offspring
are even freer and bolder: both looser and more
extreme, fractured and open, solid and expansive.
The same democratic evenhandedness enlivens
their eccentrically configured surfaces, only now it
is fueled by anarchistic delight—neither chaos nor
order as they are conventionally conceived but both
together. As grounded as they are ambitious, Lang’s
life-embracing paintings invite viewers to get lost in
the moment while they cause the moment to expand
so that it lasts a lot longer than usual and is far more
resonant than expected.
David Pagel is an art critic for the Los Angeles
Times and an art historian at Claremont Graduate
University.
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Briar 1, 1994-95
13 × 13
Crazy Tickling Painting, 1994–95
13 × 13
Flicker, 1994-98
13 × 13
Eye Lights, 1998
15 × 15
Enchanced 3 (Niagra), 1998
17 × 17
Native, 1998
113 × 113
Hybrid Line Variations, 2006-07
Dimensions variable
Diamond Painting 12, 1999
120 × 84
(Not in Exhibition)
Smoking Waters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2008
Smoking Waters 1, 2008
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 2, 2008
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 3, 2008
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 4, 2008
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 5, 2008
82 × 47 ½
River Dream 1, 2008
50 ½ × 27
River Dream 2, 2008
50 ½ × 27
River Dream 3, 2008
50 ½ × 27
River Painting Series:
Agua Particular, 2008
95 × 72
Gary Lang Studio, Ojai, California, 2008
CHECKLIST OF THE EXHIBITION
All dimensions are given in inches. Height precedes width. Gary Lang is represented by ACE Gallery, Los Angeles.
Briar 1, 1994-95
acrylic on panel
13 × 13
Crazy Tickling Painting, 1994–95
acrylic on muslin on panel
13 × 13
Dividing Time: Profiles 1, 2008
video produced by Gary Lang
and Quint Contemporary Art,
La Jolla, CA
13 minutes
Enchanced 3 (Niagra), 1998
acrylic on muslin on panel
17 × 17
Eye Lights, 1998
acrylic on muslin on panel
15 × 15
Flicker, 1994-98
acrylic on panel
13 × 13
Hybrid Line Variations, 2006-07
oil, acrylic and oil
monoprint on paper
Dimensions variable
Native, 1998
acrylic on canvas
113 × 113
River Dream 1, 2008
acrylic on panel
50 ½ × 27
River Dream 2, 2008
acrylic on panel
50 ½ × 27
River Dream 3, 2008
acrylic on panel
50 ½ × 27
River Painting Series:
Agua Particular, 2008
acrylic on canvas on panel
95 × 72
Smoking Waters 1, 2008
acrylic on canvas on panel
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 2, 2008
acrylic on panel
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 3, 2008
acrylic on canvas on panel
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 4, 2008
acrylic on panel
82 × 47 ½
Smoking Waters 5, 2008
acrylic on canvas on panel
82 × 47 ½
GARY LANG
Born: Los Angeles, 1950
Resides: Ojai, California
EDUCATION
1975
M.F.A., Yale University, New Haven, CT
1973
B.F.A., California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA
1970-71
Whitney Independent Study Program, New York
1968-69
Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles
AWARDS AND HONORS
1995
The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts Grant
1975-1977
Fulbright/Hayes Travel Grant, Barcelona, Spain
1974
N.E.A., Yale University Sculpture Commission
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2008
Gary Lang, Out Standing Time, Rosemary Berkel and
Harry L. Crisp II Museum, Southeast Missouri
State University, Cape Girardeau, MO
Gary Lang, Hybrid Variations 3, Edward Cella
Art+Architecture, Santa Barbara, CA
2007
Gary Lang, Hybrid Variations 2, Edward Cella
Art+Architecture, Santa Barbara, CA
2006
Gary Lang, Three Decades, Nathan Larramendy
Gallery, Ojai, CA
Gary Lang, Hybrid Variations 1, Edward Cella
Art+Architecture, Santa Barbara, CA
2005
Gary Lang, Sageing: Seven New Paintings, Bentley
Projects, Phoenix, AZ
2004
Gary Lang, Abundance Automata,
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, The
Netherlands
Gary Lang, California Paintings, Galerie Zürcher,
Paris, France
Circling Madison, MMOCA, (Garden
Commission), Olbrich Botanical Gardens,
Madison, WI
2003
Gary Lang, Four New Paintings, Quint
Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA
Gary Lang, Galerie Trabant, Vienna, Austria
2002
Circles and Cycles, A Chance Garden Phase 2, The
Color Project, The Flower Fields in Carlsbad,
Public Garden Commission, Carlsbad, CA
Gary Lang, Painting Installation, Quint
Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA
Gary Lang Paintings, Gallery K, Kurashiki, Japan
2001
Gary Lang, Mirrors, Brian Gross Fine Art,
San Francisco
Circles and Cycles, A Chance Garden, The Color
Project, The Flower Fields in Carlsbad, Public
Garden Commission, Carlsbad, CA
Gary Lang, Native, Crocker Plaza, courtesy Brian
Gross Fine Art, San Francisco
Gary Lang, California Drip Lines, Stark Gallery,
New York
Gary Lang, Paintings, Galerie Trabant, Vienna,
Austria
Gary Lang, Paintings, Yoshizo Hirai, Osaka, Japan
2000
Open Studio, International Studio/Curatorial
Program, New York
1999
Gary Lang, Diamond Paintings, Stark Gallery,
New York
Gary Lang, Diamond Paintings, Galerie Zürcher,
Paris, France
Gary Lang, Life Lines‑works on paper, Brian Gross
Fine Art, San Francisco
Gary Lang, Testimonials 1999, Stark Gallery,
New York
1998
Gary Lang, Testimonials, Claremont Graduate
University, Claremont, California
Gary Lang, Intimate Works, Brian Gross Fine Art,
San Francisco
54
The Hague, The Netherlands
Gary Lang, Circle Paintings 1990‑96, Brian Gross
Fine Art, San Francisco
1995
Gary Lang, Mirrors, Galerie Zürcher, Paris, France
1994
Gary Lang, Recent Paintings, Brian Gross Fine Art,
San Francisco
Michael Klein Inc., New York
1993
Gary Lang, Recent Paintings, Brian Gross Fine Art,
San Francisco
Gary Lang, Galeria Cadaques, Cadaques, Spain
Gary Lang, Paintings 1993, Michael Klein Inc.,
New York
1992
Gary Lang, New Work, Michael Klein Inc., New York
Gary Lang, New Work, Nina Freudenheim Gallery,
Buffalo, NY
Gary Lang, Site Circle Installation, Margaret
Lipworth Fine Art, Boca Raton, FL
1991
Gary Lang, Plaid Paintings, Annina Nosei Gallery,
New York
1997
Gary Lang, Paintings and Objects 1975‑1997, Sordoni
Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes‑Barre, PA
Gary Lang, Chance 1997, Galerie Zürcher, Paris,
France
Gary Lang, Paintings, Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA
1990
Gary Lang, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York
Gary Lang, Installation Work/New Large‑Scale
Paintings, Quint‑Krichman Projects,
La Jolla, CA
1996
Gary Lang, Hague Project, Gemeentemuseum Den
Haag, The Hague, The Netherlands
Gary Lang, Hague Project: Large Scale Wall Pieces,
Crosby Street Project, New York
Gary Lang, Energized Lines, Maud Boreel Fine Art,
1989
Simon Watson Gallery, New York
Gary Lang, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York
Gary Lang, Miniature Paintings, Pretto/Berland Hall
Gallery, New York
Mark Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA
1988
Gary Lang, New Small Paintings, Julian Pretto/
Berland Hall, New York
1974
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
1987
Gary Lang, Site Installation, Madison Art Center,
Madison, WI
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1986
Gary Lang, Mark Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA
Gary Lang, Galeria Cadaques, Cadaques, Spain
Gary Lang, Paintings & Objects, Paris/New York,
Kent Gallery, Kent, CT
1984
Kirk de Gooyer Gallery, Los Angeles
Gary Lang, Paintings & Aggraphages, Baskerville +
Watson Gallery, New York
1983
Mark Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA
Kirk de Gooyer Gallery, Los Angeles
1982
Gary Lang, Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA
Gary Lang, Barcelona Paintings, Downtown Gallery,
Los Angeles
1981
Gary Lang, Paintings & Objects, Todd Gallery,
Phoenix, AZ
1980
Ulrike Kantor Gallery, Los Angeles
Gary Lang, Weapons, L.A.C.E. Gallery, Los Angeles
1975
Gary Lang, Barcelona Paintings, Institute of
American Studies, Barcelona, Spain
Centro Cultural de los Estados Unidos,
Madrid, Spain
2008
Less is More, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag,
The Hague, The Netherlands
2007
An Eclectic Eye, Selections from the Dan Leach
Collection, Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ
Tenth Anniversary, SCIART, Cal State University,
Camarillo, CA
Welcome to Our Neighborhood, Edward Cella
Art+Architecture, Santa Barbara, CA
Small is Beautiful, Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert
Inc., New York
2006
Heavy Light, Video and Digital Works, Quint
Contemporary, La Jolla, CA
Explorations, Edward Celia Art+Architecture, Santa
Barbara, CA
New Works, Galerie Trabant, Kitzbuhel, Austria
Southern Exposure, Museum of Contemporary Art
San Diego, La Jolla, CA
Canard etait toujours vivant, Panorama de la
peinture contemporaine, Abbaye Saint‑André
Centre d’art contemporain, Meymac, France
Glass Seriously, Dorsky Projects, New York
Universal Medium, McClain Gallery, Houston, TX
2004
Tinseltown Too, Domestic Settings Gallery,
Los Angeles
Specific Objects: The Minimalist Influence, Museum
of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA
World Peace (20th Anniversary of Bijutsu Sekai) Liu
Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai, China
55
Blur Temporary Contemporary @ the Bekins, Santa
Barbara, CA
Galerie Trabant ‑ Steendrukkerij Amsterdam,
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Inaugural Exhibition, Bentley Projects, Scottsdale, AZ
Rupertinum Museum of Contemporary Art,
Salzburg, Austria
2003
Nine Artists Installed, Peggy Phelps Gallery,
Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
Continuous Senses, Kurashiki City Art Museum,
Kurashiki, Japan
2002
Minimal, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag,
The Hague, The Netherlands
Painting’s Edge, Parks Exhibition Center, Idyllwild
Arts, Idyllwild, CA
Continuous Senses, Gallery Jurou, Kurashiki, Japan
2001
Brian Gross Fine Art, Gallery Artists, Shasta College
Art Gallery, Art Department, Redding, CA
Chouinard: A Living Legacy, Oceanside Museum
of Art, Kruglak Gallery & Boehm Gallery,
Oceanside, CA
Collaborations, Galerie Trabant, Vienna, Austria
Fifteen Years of Painting at Stark Gallery, Stark
Gallery, New York
Galerie Zürcher, Paris, France
2000
New York Artists, Eckert Fine Art Naples, Naples, FL
Small Work, Nina Freudenheim, Inc., Buffalo, NY
Works on Paper, Stark Gallery, New York
Haulin’ Ass, Pierogi 2000 Flat Files (Armed and
Dangerous), Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco
(exhibition traveled to Los Angeles, Kansas
City, and Berlin)
56
1999
Apprendre à Regarder, HEC Campus, Paris, France
Davis Street Inaugural, Butters Gallery Ltd.,
Portland, Oregon
1998
I Love New York—Crossover of Contemporary Art,
Museum Ludwig, Köln, Germany
Flexing the Abs; New Paintings by Gary Lang, David
Row, & Tad Wiley, RARE, New York
Cool Painting, Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco
Self‑Portrait, Gallery at Dieu Donne Papermill,
New York
4th Annual Group Show, Ruth Bachofner Gallery,
Santa Monica, CA
The Paper Show, HBO Corporate Gallery, New York
Paper +, Gallery at Dieu Donne Papermill, New York
Paperworks from Dieu Donne Papermill, HBO
Headquarters, New York
Projects, Galerie Zürcher, Paris, France
1997
Current Themes, Persistent Dialogues: Works from the
Maslow Collection, Everhart Museum, Scranton, PA
Amour, Margaret Lipworth Fine Art, Boca Raton, FL
Anniversary Shows 1973‑1997, Galeria Cadaques,
Cadaques, Spain
La Règle et L’Emotion, Centre Xavier Battini,
L’Isle‑sur‑la‑Sorgue, France
Abstraction Index, Condeso/Lawler Gallery,
New York
Benefit Exhibition, Pat Hearn Gallery, New York
Drawing From Life, Stark Gallery, New York
Small Works, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York
1996
The Collection of Julian Pretto, Wadsworth
Atheneum, Hartford, CT
Mid‑Winter Exhibition, Brian Gross Fine Art,
San Francisco
1995
Works on Paper, Galerie Zürcher, Paris, France
Color Painting, Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco
Julian’s Show, curated by Julian Pretto, Littlejohn
Contemporary, New York
Arresting Images, Gallery 400, The University of
Illinois, Chicago
Paintings, Quint Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA
1994
New York Abstract Painting, Salvatore Ala Gallery,
New York
About Color, Charles Cowles Gallery, New York
Geometrie En Question, Galerie Zürcher, Paris,
France
1993
Contemporarnes, Prato, Italy
The Return of the Cadavre Exquis, The Drawing
Center, New York
Three Painters, Margaret Lipworth Fine Art, Boca
Raton, FL
East Coast—West Coast, Nancy Drysdale Gallery,
Washington, DC
Sailing to Byzantium with Disenchantment, Sergio
Tossi Arte Contemporanea, Prato, Italy
1993
Collage, Brian Gross Fine Art, San Francisco
Lang, McLaughlin, Venezia, Nina Freudenheim
Gallery, Buffalo, NY
Kurswechsel, Michael Klein Inc. at Transact
Exhibitions, Köln, Germany
1992
Ecstasy, Dooley Le Cappelaine, New York
Geometric Strategies, Marilyn Pearl Gallery,
New York
Ageometry, Michael Klein Inc., New York
Vibology, White Columns, New York
1991
Paintings, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York
Summer Show, Michael Klein Inc., New York
Nancy Drysdale Gallery, Washington, DC
Hill Gallery, Birmingham, Michigan
Preview, Michael Klein Inc., New York
1990
Annina Nosei Gallery, New York
Grids, Vrej Baghoomian Gallery, New York
The Grid, Ben Shahn Galleries, William Paterson
College, Wayne, NJ
Mark Quint Gallery, La Jolla, CA
Fluid Geometry, Cummings Art Center,
Connecticut College, New London, CT
Group Exhibition, Guillen & Tresserra Galleria
D’Art, Barcelona, Spain
1989
Artists of the 80’s, Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes
College, PA
Aspects of Painting, Julian Pretto Gallery, New York
Invitational, Fiction/Non‑Fiction Gallery,
New York
Group Exhibition, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York
Coming of Age, Madison Art Center, Madison, WI
Mutations, Annina Nosei Gallery, New York
1988
Albright‑Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY
Julian Pretto Gallery, New York
Adler Gallery, Los Angeles
Small Format, Lang and O’Hara, New York
1987
Adler Gallery, Los Angeles
Working in Brooklyn/Painting, Brooklyn Museum,
Brooklyn, NY
1986
Paris Bienale, Paris, France
57
Adler Gallery, Los Angeles
Modern Objects—A New Dawn, Baskerville +
Watson, New York
1985
Off the Streets, Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit,
Los Angeles
Bill and Merry Norris Collection, Pepperdine
University, Los Angeles
Recent Painting in Southern California, Fisher
Gallery, University of Southern California,
Los Angeles
1984
Crime and Punishment, Triton Museum, Santa
Clara, CA
A Broad Spectrum: Contemporary Los Angeles
Painters and Sculptors, Design Center,
Los Angeles
Olympiad: Summer ‘84, Koplin Center, Los Angeles
1983
University Place Gallery, New York
Jan Baum Gallery, Los Angeles
Group Exhibition, Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA
1982
4th Anniversary of Chinese Chance, University Place
Gallery, New York
Sunday in Rio, LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary
Exhibitions), Los Angeles
Theatrical Abstractions, Jan Baum Gallery,
Los Angeles
1981
Sanders Collection, Plains Art Museum,
Moorhead, MN
Group Exhibition, Molly Barnes Gallery,
Los Angeles
Intimate Object, Downtown Gallery, Los Angeles
58
1981
Emerging Downtown Los Angeles Artists, Cyprus
Gallery, Los Angeles
California Artists, Tower Gallery, New York
Wall Constructions, Security Pacific Bank,
Los Angeles
Ulrike Kantot Los Angeles
Gary Lang and Joe Fay, Mark Quint Gallery,
Los Angeles
The New Art of Downtown Los Angeles, Madison Art
Center, Madison, WI (traveled to four North
American Museums)
Recent Acquisitions, Community Redevelopment
Agency, Los Angeles
1978
United Nations Plaza, New York
1976
Ed Thorp Gallery, New York
1975
Americans Painting in Spain, Institute of North
American Studies, Barcelona, Spain; traveled
to Madrid
Group Exhibition, Geneva, Switzerland
1974
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT
1972
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
American Embassy, Paris
American Embassy, Algiers
American Embassy, Hong Kong
Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY
Cedars Sinai Hospital—Marcia and Simon
Weisman Collection, Los Angeles
Contemporary Art Museum, University of South
Florida, Tampa, FL
Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI
Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague,
The Netherlands
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art,
Madison, WI
The Maslow Collection, Wilkes‑Barre, PA
Meadowbrook Art Gallery, Oakland University,
Rochester, NY
Menu Collection, Houston, TX
Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority,
Chicago
Museum of Art Contemporain, Angers, France
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego,
La Jolla, CA
Museum of Art, University of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, Ml
Plains Art Museum, Moorhead, MN
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT
CORPORATE COLLECTIONS
AT & T, Somerset, NJ
AXA Art, Köln, Germany
City Redevelopment Agency, Los Angeles
Hewlett Packard, Palo Alto, CA
IBM Corporation, Somers, NY
Nordstern, Köln, Germany
Paine Webber, New York
Rayovac, Madison, WI
Stein & Company, Chicago
Thompson Publishing Group, New York
Tuttle & Taylor, Los Angeles
Qualcomm, San Diego, CA
For Ruth, Chance and Sage
Text Copyright © 2008 Cr i s p Mu s e u m
Illustrations Copyright © 2008 Gary Lang
Photographs of artwork: Bill Dewey
All rights reserved
Catalogue design: Kate Schaefer
Set in Adobe Garamond
1250 copies were printed
by Concord Printing Services
Cape Girardeau, Missouri
Cover: Smoking Waters 3, 2008 (detail)
Financial assistance for this project has been provided by the
Missouri Arts Council, a state agency