Brian Gross Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Heliotrope, an exhibition of new works by Colorado sculptor Pard Morrison, on Saturday, July 7, 2018, from 4-6pm, with an artist talk at 4:30pm. On view will be three monumental freestanding sculptures, multi-colored paintings, and a selection of small sculptural works in patinated aluminum. In Heliotrope, Morrison’s reductive sculptural forms have expanded to include increasingly complex patterns rendered in dynamic color arrangements, creating works with optically charged resonance. The exhibition will be on view through August 25, 2018.

Using the minimalist tradition as a foundation, Pard Morrison’s newest works explore the visual interplay of color, patterning, and form. In this body of work, Morrison has covered the surfaces of his aluminum forms with horizontal, zigzag, or syncopated diagonal lines using an enameling process he calls patination. Unlike previous works, where Morrison employed broad areas of color across irregular shapes, in the new works his surfaces display patterns of narrow, painterly lines in increasingly vibrant color combinations. For Morrison, this shift in color and patterning is meant to capture a psychological movement towards the light – the meaning of heliotrope.

Morrison’s large-scale, freestanding sculpture Heliotrope measures an impressive eight feet tall and makes for a profound visual encounter. Covered on all sides with repeatedly bent, vertical lines in bright colors, Morrison’s patterning creates a structural tension in relation to the rectangular form. In his paintings, Morrison’s explorations into patterning take flight with zigzagging stripes and staggered lines of pulsating rhythmic tonalities. Also introduced in the exhibition are small totemic sculptures resting on wall-mounted shelves, each displaying a unique visual vocabulary. Through his work Morrison aims to represent both the natural and the artificial, the minimal and the complex, while blurring the line between complex fabrication and traditional painting.

Pard Morrison was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado and received his BFA in sculpture from Colorado State University. His work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and can be found in the collections of The Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, NM; Colorado State University Art Museum, Fort Collins, CO; Colorado Springs Fine Art Center, CO; University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY; Columbus State University, Columbus, GA; University of Colorado, Denver, CO; The U.S. Embassy, The Hague, Netherlands; and The Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA, among others. In 2013 Morrison was featured in The Lannan Foundation’s exhibition, AGAIN, Repetition, Obsession, and Meditation in The Lannan Collection, and was included in the exhibition, CATALYST, at the Denver Botanical Gardens. Morrison currently lives and works in Colorado Springs. This is his fourth exhibition with Brian Gross Fine Art.