JOSH SPERLING – CHASING RAINBOWS
2018-01-08The exhibition brings together a number of new works by the New York-based artist: composites—or shaped canvases and plywood panels—a series of monochrome canvas reliefs, and a large-scale installation. Sperling’s dynamic clusters of brightly colored forms blur the lines between painting and sculpture, image and object. Though each shaped canvas is distinct, it relies on other forms in the field for compositional coherence and energy. Often asymmetrical and happily off-kilter, a cluster is always satisfying in its surprising arrangement.
In Poppycock (2017), three ovals compete for prominence in the center of the composition, shuffling and re-shuffling before settling into a makeshift pile. A maroon arch buttresses them, cradling them into stillness. These snaking forms—“squiggles”—appear throughout Sperling’s work and act, alternately, as instigators and appeasers of movement: the maelstrom of forms that characterizes Sperling’s work. To execute a single “squiggle,” sheets of plywood are laid on top of each other, resembling a topographical model, before they are covered in canvas and painted over in Sperling’s signature palate of saturated, sometimes clashing colors. The ridges of the wooden armature, visible through the canvas, add sculptural contrast to Sperling’s interest in flatness—of color, of form.
Opposite – Installation view
Exhibition runs through to February 24th, 2018
Perrotin
76 rue de Turenne
75003 Paris
