Previous Shows: 2013: Emptiness is Form: Curatorial Statement

“Emptiness is Form” brings together four abstract painters whose work elicits a heightened sense of awareness. The show is comprised of Linda Francis, Don Voisine, Karen Schifano and Myron Stout. Collectively, their works realize a space that can only be understood in the mind. And for each artist, form is simultaneously empty and full.  

Employing a distinct, nocturnal light Stout’s black and white works hold a unique place in 20th century painting. A somewhat reclusive artist, Stout approached painting as a form of asceticism. He is part of a lineage that finds antecedents in the Orphism of Frantisek Kupka and the geometric abstraction of Burgoyne Diller. His work subsequently had an effect on a generation of painters responding to Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism. Francis, Voisine and Schifano are his heirs who are constantly pushing the vocabulary.  

Francis uses astronomy and physics as way to materialize theoretical concepts. Interference, attempts to quantify a formal idea, in the process highlighting the limits of human understanding. Voisine colorfully frames geometric compositions of matte and gloss black, which often bar the viewer from entering in an illusionistic manner. In the case of Usual Light, he leaves just enough space around the periphery, begging us to peer inside. Schifano creates works that play with the edge and its relation to the field. Like many of her compositions her work, Early American, acts as a portal or a door.  

Jason Stopa