Painter Bill Jensen's rich, intense abstracts currently on view at Cheim & Read include influences not only from early American modernists like Albert Pinkham Ryder and Arthur Dove and Abstract Expressionists including Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky, but also from ancient Taoist philosophy (from the show's press release). Jensen is strongly influenced by the third and fourth century Taoist belief that "all matter is the same" and the mantra "something is everything and everything is something." Hence, the artist "strives to attain content originating in the psychic and emotional" convinced that "content is more important than result." Very Zen-like, Jensen believes that "his paintings' beauty, or lack thereof, is not his decision, but determined by the painting itself."
The Minneapolis-born, New York-based artist makes his own special tools and deeply colored paints to create works composed by "multiple layering, scraping, seeping and 'dredging.'" The results are wonderfully saturated and textured canvases. Whether they are his vivid paintings or his contrasting black-and-white works on paper, Jensen's results are complex and exciting. As the artist says, "Each work for me is not about one idea; it is about an emotional event that must be searched for and clarified." Learn more at Cheimread.com. Through March 27th.
TIME AFTER TIME, 1993-2009
GRIOT, 2006
LUOHAN (NIAFUNKE), 2008-09
LUOHAN (RED PINE), 2008
PASSARE DA BERNARDO XXXV, 2009
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