Paul Henry RAMIREZ - Playconics

Press release

Jean-Luc and Takako Richard are excited to announce the opening of its newest gallery in Chelsea, NYC on September 8, 2011 and the gallery’s inaugural exhibit of Paul Henry Ramirez entitled PLAYCONICS. The exhibition will run up to October 15th.

Donald Kuspit, writer and critic, in the accompanying catalog describes Ramirez as “an important new kind of abstract painter – not your old-time transcendentalist…, but a playful abstractionist, that is, an abstractionist playing with color and form to exciting imaginative effect…”

In PLAYCONICS Ramirez explores the vocabulary he has developed over 20 years. Comprised of eight large and several smaller paintings, this exhibit continues to combine playfulness with his iconic forms. Ramirez describes his recent paintings as “biogeomorphic abstractions,” a morphing together of his earlier biomorphic forms with newer solid geometric forms that incorporates both the feminine and the masculine into an elasticized mixture of both. His palette also reflects this evolution as he combines his signature flesh/pink “figurative” colors with far ranging bold colors of orange, yellow, green, blue and more. Kuspit writes of Ramirez’s new combinations, “His figures are abstract hermaphrodites, their sexual attributes geometrically idealized and perfected, making them all the more seductive.”

Ramirez invites the viewer to be directly involved in the creation of the new TIPSY paintings. By rotating the work, the viewer is able to reconfigure the paintings into endless new compositions. Since the mid-90’s, Ramirez has created installations that expand the painting into its architectural surroundings, while the painting becomes one with the architecture. The two separate site-specific wall installations at opposite ends of the gallery have the effect of bringing the whole gallery, along with the other paintings and viewer, into one encompassing experience.

In 2012 the artist will have his fourth solo show at Galerie Richard in  Paris. In 2013 Ramirez’s work will be included in a Smithsonian Museum of American Art exhibition featuring works from their permanent collection. His recent solo exhibition,  BLACKOUT (2010) was the final commissioned project initiated by The Newark Museum of Art to dialogue with  the major Centennial exhibition : Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1929-1950. The Newark Museum, Smithsonian Museum of American Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art have purchased  Ramirez paintings. Museum exhibits include: Albright-Knox Art Gallery, NY, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, CT, Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY, Tang Museum, NY, The Contemporary Arts Center, OH, The Corcoran Gallery, Washington, DC, The Drawing Center, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY. He has been written about in: Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Flash Art and The New York Times…

The exhibition will be accompanied by a full-color catalog and essay by Donald Kuspit.