Minus Space is excited to announce the two-person exhibition Gabriele Evertz / Sanford Wurmfeld: Polychromy. The exhibition will present new works by two revolutionary New York City-based abstract color painters.

For three decades, Gabriele Evertz has examined the “pioneering problem of color” and its transformative effect on the viewer. In her new paintings, she applies color in spontaneously conceived sequences made in real time at the very moment of painting. Her paintings continue to employ and expand upon her singular color system of twelve highly-saturated hues, which she juxtaposes against an extensive array of light to dark gray values and metallic pigments. Evertz’s paintings interweave perfectly plumb, vertical stripes with lines that taper as they reach the top and bottom edges of the canvas, which are nearly impossible to perceive. The resulting paintings present a barrage of visual information that moves color and form in and out of sequence and symmetry causing the eye to move through undulating, pulsating spaces. Color and line appear immaterial, filling the viewer with a tremendous sense of aliveness.

Working across a wide array of media, from abstract painting to installation to filmmaking, Sanford Wurmfeld has exhaustively investigated the subject of color for more than fifty years through its essential qualities of hue, value, and saturation. In his paintings, Wurmfeld mixes and modifies colors empirically by eye without relying on any supporting scientific or mathematical system, which he then overlays onto layered grids of shifting alignment. Wurmfeld believes the perception of color to be a highly subjective experience and he openly embraces differing, individualized responses on the part of the viewer. He states, “We each bring to the paintings some kind of baggage that is far from universal, and so each of these paintings has a different emotional content. I mean emotional as an almost visceral response, rather than a feeling you would name with words. I recognize that it’s there, but I don’t think it’s something that I’m particularly controlling for the viewer. I’m just creating something that creates a kind of visceral response in me.”

Gabriele Evertz (b. 1945 Berlin, Germany) has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including in Australia, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, and the United States. Her recent museum exhibitions include MoMA PS1 (NYC), Heckscher Museum (Huntington, NY), Hillwood Art Museum (Brookville, NY), Columbus Museum (Columbus, OH), Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL), Ulrich Museum (Wichita, KS), and Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum (Hagen, Germany).

Her work is included in many public collections worldwide, such as The British Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Columbus Museum of Art, Harvard University Art Museum, Hunterdon Museum of Art, Karl Ernst Osthaus Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Museum of Modern Art, New Jersey State Museum, Parrish Art Museum, Stiftung für Konstruktive und Konkrete Kunst Zurich, Ulrich Museum of Art, Wilhelm Mack Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, among others. Her work has been reviewed in publications, such as Artcritical, ArtSlant, Hyperallergic, The New Criterion, Village Voice, and Wall Street Journal.

In addition to her painting practice, Evertz is a Professor of Art, Painting in Hunter College’s Department of Art & Art History, NYC. She is a key protagonist in the renowned Hunter Color School, alongside other color painters, including Sanford Wurmfeld, Robert Swain, Vincent Longo, and Doug Ohlson. Over the past ten years, Evertz has also curated several critically-acclaimed artist retrospectives and surveys of abstract painting at Hunter College, including Visual Sensations: Robert Swain Paintings, 1967-2010; Presentational Painting III; Seeing Red: An International Exhibition of Nonobjective Painting (co-curated with Michael Fehr); Set in Steel: The Sculpture of Antoni Milkowski; and Mac Wells: Light into Being (co-curated with Robert Swain).

Sanford Wurmfeld (b. 1942 in Bronx, NY) has exhibited his work worldwide in solo and group exhibitions since the late 1960s. In 2013, he was the subject of a major 45-year survey exhibition entitled Sanford Wurmfeld: Color Visions, 1966-2013 curated by William C. Agee at Hunter College/Times Square Gallery, NYC. He has also presented solo exhibitions at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, Galerie Denise Rene, Susan Caldwell Gallery, Bard College, Maxwell Davidson Gallery (all New York), Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum (Hagen, Germany), Mucsarnok Kunsthalle (Budapest, Hungary), Talbot-Rice Gallery (Edinburgh, Scotland), Neuberger Museum (Purchase, NY), and Ewing Museum Gallery (Knoxville, TN).

In 1968, Wurmfeld was the youngest artist included in the landmark exhibition Art of the Real curated by Eugene Goossen at the Museum of Modern Art, NY. The exhibition traveled for the next two years to the Grand Palais (Paris, France), Kunsthaus (Zurich, Switzerland), and The Tate Gallery (London, England). Wurmfeld’s other museum group exhibitions include the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Academy Museum (both New York), Dayton Art Museum (Dayton, OH), Long Beach Museum of Art (Long Beach, CA), Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum (Hagen, Germany), and Espace de l’Art Concret (Mouans-Sartoux, France), among others. Wurmfeld has lectured and written extensively on the history of color, painting, and abstraction. He has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, City University of New York, and Dartmouth College. Wurmfeld’s work is included in collections worldwide, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum (all New York), Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum, Sprengler Museum (both Germany), and Espace de l’Art Concret (France), among others. In addition to his artistic work, Wurmfeld taught in the Department of Art at Hunter College from 1967-2012, where he educated and mentored countless generations of artists. Originally invited to join the faculty by sculptor Tony Smith and critic Eugene Goossen, Wurmfeld was Chairman of the department from 1978-2006.