This exhibition continues Mangold’s work with an enclosed void seen in his Ring Paintings, which he exhibited at the gallery in 2011, and his Frame Paintings of the early 1980s. A catalogue accompanying the exhibition includes the essay “Squaring the Circle” by Robert Storr, Dean and Professor of Painting/Printmaking, Yale University School of Art. About this new body of work, Storr writes, “This is vigorous, straight-from-the-shoulder art devoid of strain or bombast and imbued with a sureness and grace that are the hallmarks of genuine mastery.”

Mangold's new work continues to explore the classic elements of composition—shape, line, and color—in a series of ten canvases. Squares, rectangles, and circles are found in individual works, though Mangold modifies rings, creating compounds of angles and curves. As Storr points out in his essay, Mangold paints with mostly “warm hues—yellows, ochers, oranges, and reds—with soft blues, green and grey,” and counterpoints of a curvilinear or undulating graphite line.

Storr writes in his catalogue essay, “Mangold’s most recent paintings share the hollow-core or donut format of [the Ring Paintings], even though the hole in the center is sometimes round and sometimes square. In their strangely configured aggregate, they might best be thought of as new wrinkles in a previous inscription of his essential iconography.”

This exhibition reveals subtle yet important changes in form and composition from the artist’s previous bodies of work. “Mangold’s genius…” Storr writes, “...is to perceive fresh opportunities where others anticipate mere repetition. Thus, with a few adjustments in basic constructs already known to him and to us, he has provided himself and his viewers with a whole new set of formal relationships.” In one case, Compound Ring II Variant (White Line) (2012), Mangold leaves part of the canvas raw, creating the impression of a white curvilinear line that contrasts the black graphite line seen in Compound Ring I (2011) and other works.

This is the artist’s 14th exhibition with Pace Gallery.

*image (left)
Framed Square with Open Center III, 2013
© Robert Mangold 
courtesy of the artist and Pace Gallery