The Armory Show 2016 | Pier 94 Booth 743: Frank Bowling

Hales Gallery is proud to announce a solo presentation of recent works by British painter Frank Bowling at The Armory Show 2016. Recent solo exhibitions in London and LA focusing on these paintings from this exciting new period of painterly experimentation have won critical acclaim, highlighting the artist's mastery of and continued innovation within the field of abstract painting. Pushing the boundaries of abstraction since the 1960s, this will be the first time Bowling's pioneering practice has been examined at the fair through a solo presentation.

 

Over his prolific career, Bowling has undertaken an ongoing exploration of the nature and possibilities of abstract painting, exploring diverse range of principles and processes which now in these recent works converge and coalesce in dynamic new configurations of colour and form. In the presented works, the pouring of paint harks back to Bowling's starkly formalist 1970s Poured Paintings. Now in his 80s, Bowling preserves the original spirit of modernist improvisation which drove him to develop his quasi-automatic pouring technique. That spirit is kept alive also via the incorporation of other techniques: airy, expressive fields of stained painting evoking his light-filled colour fields, stencilled patterns and outlined shapes recalling the seminal Map Paintings, an underlying geometric rigour and structural complexity which has encompassed his career in the interplay between rectangular and circular forms. The selection also demonstrates significant new developments in the artist's practice in response to his changing experiences and physical abilities, from new imagery and experiments with collaged canvas to the incorporation of collaboration with family and friends in the studio to create these grand works.

 

Indeed, the ambitious scale and reach of the large, multifaceted canvases in this presentation demonstrate their significance as a celebratory culmination of Bowling's continued commitment to and confident ability in pushing the limits of painting's possibilities.