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11.10.2008

Rose Olson: Ethereal Color

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Installation shot: Just Color No Curves, solo exhibition by Rose Olson at Kingston Gallery, Boston

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While Bram Bogart's massive paintings were straining the gallery walls of Jacobson Howard in New York (previous post), Rose Olson's ethereal layers of color were hovering over their appointed stations like benevolent spirits at the Kingston Gallery in Boston. Olson is well known in this city for her paintings, which consist of washes of (acrylic) color on birch-ply panels or boxes. There's a nice yin-and-yang at work here: the solidity of the support tethering those luminous veils.

I'm showing you installation shots only, because my little camera couldn't quite capture the subtleties of hue in the individual paintings nor the hushed conversation between the rectilinearity of the composition and the the organic pattern of the wood. But here in these shots, you can certainly see something of the kinship between and among the paintings--the rhythm in their sizes and spacing-- and the brilliance of the color, which manages assertiveness and reticence at the same time. Just Color No Curves was at the Kingston Gallery through November 1. You can see additonal work on the artist's website.


Above: In the main gallery, looking into Gallery 2
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Below: left wall of the main gallery



3 comments:

Kate Beck said...

Nice to see Rose's beautiful paintings. Thanks, Joanne.

Nancy Natale said...

Such gorgeous color! I particularly love the two blue/yellow/orange striped paintings between the two smaller orange ones. What a wonderful presentation Rose makes of her work. Thanks for posting this beautiful show, Joanne.

Jeffrey Collins said...

Yeah it's really too bad that to take really good photos of paintings you mostly need a $1200 camera to do it with. And sometimes even those don't work right. Thanks for the photos. From what I can see, I would enjoy the show. It looks like it was very well hung too. I guess Rose definitely took her time with the placement of paintings in the show.