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“Working the Grid,” an exhibition curated by Howard Scott that features works by six painters, will be the inaugural installment of Lafayette’s Summer Curator’s Series June 9-Aug. 20 at the Grossman Gallery of the Williams Visual Arts Building.
The exhibition will open with a free, public reception 2-4 p.m. Sunday, June 9. Gallery hours are 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
The painters represented in “Working the Grid” are Diana Cooper and Stephen Westfall of New York City; Lance Letscher of Austin, Texas; Francisco Castro Lenero and Boris Viskin of Mexico City; and Rebecca Salter of London, England.
Salter and Lenero will give lectures at the Grossman Gallery 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 11, and lead a workshop for area high school students 2-4 p.m. the following day. Westfall will give a lecture at the gallery 7 p.m. Friday, June 21. The events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Lori Dobson, 610-330-5831, or Jim Toia, director of the Grossman Gallery, 610-330-5577.
“As we continue to bring artwork to the region, we want not only to show art from a regional perspective, but also to extend the exposure of quality work to the tri-state region,” says Toia. “By offering the Summer Curator’s Series, we’re creating an opportunity for people deeply invested in the art world to expose our surrounding regions with specific ideas and viewpoints that we don’t normally get a chance to see.”
In 1985, Scott began directing the M13 Gallery on 9th Street in New York’s East Village. After moving operations to Green Street in SoHo, he recently established Howard Scott Gallery on West 20th Street.
“I have a lengthy interest in the grid – both as a structural device and as imagery in and of itself for visual artists as well as architects,” says Scott. “I believe that the grid continues to both fascinate and challenge persons whose decisions and work help to shape the world we inhabit. For these reasons, I feel that the ongoing usage of grids by painters is not only a valid theme for an exhibition, but also a potentially exciting one.”
In making his selections for the exhibition, Scott wanted artists who had earned critical attention, but were not household names.
“Further, I wanted the choice of artists to reflect to some degree the near universality of the grid as a subject engaging serious artists – hence the six artists being ones who represent Western Europe, Latin America, and the United States,” he adds.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 20-page catalog designed by Lewis Minter, director of the art department’s media lab, and features color images of all work in the show. The catalog essay was written by art critic John Goodrich.
“At first glance, the grid might seem the most dictatorial of formats,” notes Goodrich in his essay. “The expressiveness and diversity of the works in this exhibition, however, indicate the very opposite. As subtle framework, it grounds instinctive rhythms; as an explicit ordering, it addresses issues of process and context — and these artists all work in the broad terrain in-between the two. For them the grid, like every other idiom in art, becomes a vehicle for personal pursuits. Six remarkably diverse personalities illuminate the walls in Working the Grid.”
The Summer Curator’s Series will continue next year with an exhibition arranged by John Post Lee of the Gorney, Bravin & Lee Gallery in Manhattan.