Donald Sultan

From June 28 through July 30, The Drawing Room in East Hampton presents a selection of important drawings and a striking new painting by Donald Sultan. This rich collection of works on paper, punctuated by a single 2010 Lantern Flowers painting, reveals the artist’s inventive approach to his quotidian subjects which loom larger than life on paper and become transformative sculptural objects in tar and plaster.

Two early drawings, Black Roses 1988 and Black Lemon 1989 set the stage for Sultan’s dramatic and masterful use of the dry, ancient medium of charcoal in the following decades. Densely wrought in the friable medium, the small, sole lemon is a signature Sultan silhouette, widely known since the Museum of Modern Art’s 1988 exhibition, "Black Lemons". Several drawings selected from his powerful 2000-2002 series, Oranges on Branches, conjure memories of walking through an orchard laden with fruit. Sultan’s playful and deft balance of compressed charcoal mark making, combined with the velvet flocking of the fruit, dazzle and confound.

Ever inspired by the geometry and sensuality of flowers, Sultan made a large series, Wallflowers, in April of 2007 using the French medium of gouache for its opacity of hues worthy of flower petals. In these patterns of free floating wisteria, fritillaria, bluebells, and coreopsis, and many other species, Sultan reduces and repeats the architecture of each blossom in marvelous variations of form and color across the white expanse of the page.

See below for full press release and selected works.