Richmond Burton: The Prism and the Kaleidoscope

The Drawing Room in East Hampton is pleased to present "Richmond Burton: The Prism and the Kaleidoscope", on view June 9 – July 11, 2005 with an opening reception June 11, 5 – 7 pm. Burton’s first show of works on paper since 1999, is also his first solo show in the Hamptons where he lives and works in the home and studio built by Elaine de Kooning and subsequently owned by the sculptor John Chamberlain.

Burton created all of the twelve works on view, eleven watercolor and gouache paintings on paper and one oil painting on canvas, since his last New York gallery show at Cheim & Read in 2004. Like the paintings that formed the springboard for this body of work, Burton’s new works on paper are characterized by distinctive, but complementary, geometric and biomorphic visual languages that reference precedents ranging from early modern masters such as Gustaf Klimt (1862–1918), and Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) to the Abstract Expressionists associated with Eastern Long Island.

In the works most apparently governed by geometric structure, such as Pleace I, Nomad, and Shazam, the horizontal grid structure is suggestive of landscape - “more like waves or water” - as much as it is about exquisitely conceived abstract pattern color and composition. These works, along with the oil painting, Firewater (2004), continue the exploration of a compositional motif that Burton developed in the mid-1990s. When he returned to further mine this motif in 2004, he introduced a trapezoidal, step-like element at the base of the composition. Usually rendered in a shimmering silver pigment, which is often extended through the gridded linear network, the tapered horizontal form acts as both an invitation to enter the space of the painting, and an assertive reminder of its illusory nature.

See below for full press release.