SEPTEMBER 05 - SEPTEMBER 28, 2002
Recent Paintings
Boats and Triangles
RES-152-OC
Nationally renowned painter Paul Resika exhibits his latest landscape paintings in his fourth solo exhibition at Hackett-Freedman Gallery, September 5–28, 2002.
Resika, 73, continues to explore the interplay between color, form, and observation in his bold and iconic views of the harbor at Provincetown, Massachusetts. While specific to their setting, Resika’s well-known subjects of boats, water, and sky ultimately become universal symbols expressing the essence of form and light.
Indeed, in the catalogue essay, art critic David Carbone states, "This exhibition focuses on symbolist marine pictures. Boats have a fairly universal reading as a conveyor of souls—"soul-boats" as David Shapiro has written—but a specific symbol lacks mystery. Certainly, Resika provides the necessary enigma through pictorial invention."
Resika’s works of the past few years may be viewed as the culminating achievement of his long career as an abstractionist, color theorist, and direct observer of nature.
The canvases on view cover an expansive range of color and surface while demonstrating the artist’s tight editing and masterful simplification of detail. Resika’s brushwork, a unifying and atmospheric "skin" overlaying layers of scraped and reworked paint, elevates these paintings beyond mere theory or description to create complete and powerfully emotive tours de force.
Resika began his career at age 11, and, in the late 1940s, studied the tenets of abstract painting under the legendary Hans Hofmann. Later, following his passionate interest in painting from direct observation, Resika made the uncommon shift to realism. Even so, his work continued to be influenced by Hofmann’s modernist theories on geometry and color, as well as the teachings of color theorist Joseph Albers, with whom he also studied.
Paul Resika has exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries and museums such as the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters and the National Academy of Design. He divides his time between Provincetown, Massachusetts, and New York City.