PRESS RELEASE

Spanierman Modern is pleased to announce the opening on May 21, 2009 of Frank Wimberley, the first show in our New York City gallery of the work of this painter’s painter whose abstract canvases pulsate with a rare physicality.  Esteemed by his fellow artists for his unstinting commitment to exploring the expressive potential of material and surface, Wimberley has been described by the art historian Phyllis Braff (whose monograph on him is forthcoming), as an artist whose “work can project the heated dynamics and intuitive gestural qualities of Abstract Expressionism, while at the same time serving as a cool acknowledgement of the factual, non-illusionist components of the artwork.”  Based in New York and Sag Harbor, Wimberley uses found objects and handmade tools to scrape and scour his pigments and at times uses sawdust or alumina (a material used in modeling paste) to achieve certain effects.  Although his work is not specifically referential, it often evokes such experience as the jazz music he once played, the South Fork’s beaches, low-lying fields, and glowing light, and the ceramics Wimberley’s mother created, which spurred his interest in textural and volumetric manipulation.

Consisting of twenty-four paintings dating from 1987 to the present, the exhibition reveals the range of Wimberley’s production.  In Vortex (1990) he combined thick, buttery strokes in deep blues with thinner lighter colors dragged, smudged, and swept across the canvas to create contrasts of motion and force.  In Stones (1996) collaged pieces from earlier canvases and paint wiped in broad rhythmic movements flow seamlessly creating a spatial nebula in which primitive marks seem to be coalescing into symbols with archetypal associations.  In his use of collage Wimberley references the real world; his approach owes to the legacy of Tapies and Picasso, whose art provided him, beginning in the 1960s, with “a legitimate way to proceed.” In the recent Rouge (2009) collaged canvas orbs overlaid with whitish-yellow float above a ground of vibratory red and tangerine-orange. The paint is dragged and compressed to produce a dense tactility. While the image suggests the natural world, the intensity of the palette suggests the dire impact of global warming. Other works reveal how Wimberley builds effects through a broad understanding of Abstract Expressionism’s optical energy.  In Sand Bar (1995), the white impasto was spread thickly with a large spatula allowing the underpainting to escape through the surface. The painting references a brilliant coastal light, hard dark depths, and water on sand.  Debris (1999) also evokes the shore, with a translucent white layer of paint applied with enormous brushes rising upward as if to slowly subsume dripping calligraphic strokes that seem unleashed and charged.  Gum Ball (2009), in which Wimberley collaged strips of canvas and painted over them with a serrated tool, has a shimmering buoyancy.  Freely straddling the invisible line between subjective construction and reference to nature, Wimberley is an artist whose creative inventiveness is unlimited, as is demonstrated in the remarkable range of the work in this exhibition, each painting offering not just a variation, but a different and highly potent emotional tone. 

Wimberley has had many important solo exhibitions, including shows at The Black History Museum, Hempstead, New York (1973), Union Theological Seminary, New York (1974), Langston Hughes Cultural Center, Corona, New York (1987), The Sage Colleges, Albany, New York (1993, 2004), Firehouse Gallery, Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York (1995), Islip Art Museum, East Islip, New York (1997), Adelphi University, Garden City, New York (2000), Port Washington Library Gallery, New York (2002), and The Heckscher Museum, Huntington, New York (2004).  His has been included in many group exhibitions at locales including C.W. Post College, Brookville, New York (1969), The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York (1971), the Museum of Modern Art, New York (1972), Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York (1979), The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York (1985), The Baltimore Museum of Art (1986), The Islip Art Museum (1986, 1988, 1995, 1997), Adelphi University (1993), Howard University College of Fine Arts and Fondo Del Sol, Washington, D.C. (1995), Northeastern University, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts (1995), State University of New York, Stony Brook (1995), The African American Museum, Charleston, South Carolina (1997), The Mint Museum of Art, Charleston, North Carolina (1998), The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York (1998), The Sages Colleges (1998), The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta (1998), The Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut (2005), The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (2002), The Heckscher Museum (2005), The Beach State of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan (2006), The New York State Museum, Albany (2006), Spanierman Modern, New York (2006), and Southampton Historical Museum, New York (2007).