In the Slipping Mary series, Komarin works with found materials – wax paper sandwich bags, fashion magazine clippings, envelopes and other items lying around his study, or in his studio. Painting atop these, Komarin works quickly and spontaneously, sometimes intuitively, and sometimes humorously. According to the artist, it is "...something to put on something; a way of covering up; to adorn or embellish, to hide, to accentuate; these are qualities that relate to the experience in the studio, to the process of making a painting." Because the very act of reworking these found materials in the act of painting atop them triggers free associations, newly formed layered, ambiguous multiple meanings emerge – they are fragments, memories, and images that hold their own - sometimes serious, and sometimes wry.
Gary Komarin (b. 1951, New York) is a risk taker in modern painting. For nearly five decades, Komarin’s stalwart dedication to the potential of concrete art continues to produce work that remains fresh and alive, containing spontaneity, playful figuration, and painterly expression. For Komarin, abstraction has allowed him to challenge the limitations of the style to make painting ‘include more’ precisely because a recognizable image excludes too much. Komarin’s work has been exhibited extensively internationally and is found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Rome; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Museum of Modern Art, Bogota; Musée Kiyoharo, Japan; and Musée Mougin, France. Komarin lives and works in Roxbury, Connecticut and in New York City.
Water based enamel on paper
Unique
Black wood frame
Artwork is 5.5” x 4” unframed