Don Christensen: Parallel Lines | Harper's Apartment
Harper's Apartment
51 East 74th Street
Apt #2X (red buzzer)
New York, NY 10021
Harper’s Books is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of abstract painting and assemblages by Don Christensen. Spanning a period of twenty years, the work will highlight Christensen’s versatile approach in negotiating the compelling relationships between color and form, line and shape, surface and depth. The show opens on February 16 at Harper's Apartment with a reception attended by the artist, and will overlap with Harper’s Books first NADA participation, March 2-5, where Christensen’s work will be presented alongside new paintings by Sadie Laska.
Christensen’s vibrant and optically dynamic paintings burst with energy and movement. Many read like schematics written in a private language whose cadence encompasses a wide range of hues, loosely structured through geometric configurations. These visually kinetic pieces poetically map out a synthesized topography of pure rhythm and abstracted sound. Not unlike the dreamy acoustics of polyrhythmic percussion, his work silently pulses while resting simultaneously in a trance of meditative stillness.
A variety of mediums and processes are hallmarks of Christensen's practice. In his wood block painting series, begun in the nineties, Christensen constructed assemblages by connecting pieces of found wood into rectangular patchwork creations. Bright and pastel pigments were brushed or sprayed on each block’s face, visualizing a flowing checkered effect. Taking a more minimal approach in his later works on canvas, Christensen evenly applies layers of acrylic paint, creating voluminous, trapezoidal shapes on flat, colorful backgrounds. The most recent pieces return to the use of found wood to create rough surfaces for the picture plane. An abiding interest in the craft, color relationships, and geometry that guide the paintings unites his entire oeuvre.
Born in Nebraska in 1948, Christensen draws influence from a lifetime of unique experiences as an active participant in the worlds of music and visual arts. During the 1970s, he day-jobbed in the studios of artists Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons and Jules Olitski while also playing drums in formative No Wave bands and projects such as The Bush Tetras, The Contortions, The Raybeats, The Philip Glass Ensemble, and on Brian Eno's “No New York” album. In 1986, Christensen was drawn back to Nebraska, where fate and chance brought him to the lifework of Emery Blagdon, an eccentric farmer turned outsider-artist. Upon Blagdon’s death, Christensen helped take stewardship of the artist's “Healing Machines”; a series of electro-magnetic conducting metallic sculptures, now held in several museums. The Healing Machines also provoked Christensen to fully embrace visual art. Over the course of the following 25 years, he developed into a prolific painter, drawing influence from color field painters and the mystical geometric boogie of Mondrian. He lives and works out of Springs, New York.
Exhibitions
- January 14, 2021 - February 13, 2021
Eliot Greenwald: Takin’ the Riverboat Out on Snake Lake - January 13, 2021 - February 13, 2021
Spencer Lewis: Six Jutes (2) - December 9, 2020 - January 9, 2021
Spencer Lewis: Six Jutes (1) - December 10, 2020 - January 9, 2021
12 Artists - October 31, 2020 - December 6, 2020
Kevin Teare: L’Ecole Horizontale - October 28, 2020 - December 5, 2020
Kevin McNamee-Tweed: Moon Over Math Town - October 10, 2020 - November 22, 2020
Michelangelo Lovelace: Brick City - September 26, 2020 - October 26, 2020
Angel Otero: Broken Record - September 24, 2020 - October 24, 2020
Claire Colette: Fire, Rain, Heat, Night - August 28, 2020 - September 28, 2020
Enoc Perez: The Fires - August 15, 2020 - September 17, 2020
Alejandro Cardenas: AEAEA - July 25, 2020 - August 27, 2020
Spencer Lewis: Literacy Devolves Into Violence - see all exhibitions