GARY KOMARIN

Gary Komarin was born in New York City in 1951. He received an MFA in Painting (Graduate Teaching Fellowship) from Boston University Graduate School of Fine Arts. Renowned art critic, Donald Kuspit, states in his article, Gary Komarin: Iconoclastic Abstraction: "He returns Gesturalism to its origins in landscape, but the abstract landscape is no longer 'apocalyptic,' as Kandinsky's have been said to be, but whimsical. He takes what had become closed systems of geometrical and non-geometrical abstractions and interbreeds them. The result is a kind of hybrid abstraction, less heavy-handed than traditional abstraction but still emotionally serious. It is an overtly hedonistic abstraction, rather than confrontational in the style of the Old Abstract Masters; there is a power in pleasure they, in their Puritanism, could not appreciate. Komarin also has the benefit of aftersight: he orchestrates the whole development of abstraction, bringing its different musical strands together in a sort of grandly ironical musical painting."

“Gary Komarin does in his paintings what acrobats do on the high wire” says critic and Gallery director Hamlett Dobbins, “there is a constant balancing act between sophistication and simplicity, between cartoon-like expressionism and eloquent abstraction. His images at first seem simple and even awkward, but given enough time, the complexity of the parts reveals itself and the viewer begins to see Komarin's relentless artistic cunning. Like his fellow contemporary artists Guston, Twombly, and Motherwell, Komarin uses shape and form to play with the moment of recognition: when does a mark stop being a mark and become an object? The reoccurring shapes in his work - the wig, the cake, the vessel -- lend themselves to different levels of interpretation. At the same time, these images create a sense of absurdity in the painting: they are imprecise, quirky, and even romantically fanciful.”

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