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Phil Sims |
On Wednesday the 1st of September 2010, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. the ”Baukunst Galerie” will open a great solo-exhibition with works of the American artist Phil Sims. The introductory speech will be held by Dr. Roland Scotti, Curator of Foundation Liner Appenzell, Switzerland. It is the artist’s forth exhibition at the ”Baukunst Galerie”.
The exhibition will include a representative selection of ”Studio Paintings”, watercolours on maylar and ”Tea Bowls”. The ”Tea Bowls” to be shown are in a special way connected to Phil Sims’ manifold oeuvre. His watercolours on maylar are a recent development, which connect to his ”Tea Bowls”.
Phil Sims was born in 1940 in Richmond, California (USA), where he first became involved with and taught ceramics before studying painting at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1964 thru 1965. In 1977 he moved to New York and became a charter member of the informal group of the ”Radical Painters”. In 2000 he worked for one year in Santa Fé, New Mexico and in 2001 he moved into his new studio in Pennsylvania, where he still is living and working.
His paintings have been acquired by international collections and museums. They have already been presented in several exhibitions in Europe and the USA: The last eminent solo-exhibitions of his oeuvre were those in the Pfalzgalerie, Kaiserslautern, Germany in 2008 and at the Lenbachhaus in Munich in 2006. Until the 21st of June, 2010 his watercolours have been also shown in a group exhibition at the Museum Liner in Appenzell, Switzerland. Sims’ works are also part of the collection of the Erzbischöfliches Diözesanmuseum in Cologne, the Kunsthalle Kiel, the Musée d’Art Contemporain in Lyon, the Collections Panza di Biumo in Varese, the Scripps Institute in La Jolla, California, the Malmö Konsthall and the Kunstmuseum Bonn.
Phil Sims building on the tradition of the American abstract expressionism especially the painting of Mark Rothko, Clifford Still, Barnet Newman. Building on the work of his predecessors and the principle of the all-over-painting, the focus is on colour and light as the chief motive.
Since the early 1980s Phil Sims is internationally well known and belongs to the protagonists of so called ”radical painting”.
Sims invites us to accept each piece as a colored matter on a surface in its elementary nature and its beauty. He works in many layers of color to finish a painting, after having applied one layer he confronts the work of the previous day to understand the nature of the next color to be applied. Until working through many layers, he achieves an image of light and color.
He composes his paintings in layers of color and some of the colour coats only approach the pictures’ edge without really reaching them. Thus they show the other colour layers. The different gestular structured shades are made by mixing sand into the acrylic. The eye can notice these subtle movements, but the movements create a material and tactile structure, which turns the painting into an object. So the observer can experience the color itself. The optical energy turns the painting in its minimal appearance into a maximal effect. His studio paintings could be seen as an homage to Georges Braque. Phil Sims has long been interested in Braque’s unique way of understanding surfaces and colors.
Phil Sims’ main issue is the beauty of simplicity, which he expresses not only in his paintings, but also in his ”Tea Bowls”. The ”Tea Bowls” refer to the modesty of traditional Japanese tea ceremony. They are quite different from Western conceptions of beauty. In Zen Buddhism, beauty is derived from what nature shows us. Phil Sims’ aesthetics are influenced by those Zen conceptions of beauty and simplicity.
The "Tea Bowls" were extensively fired in an adaption of a, traditional japanese cave kiln up to 1400º C, that is very close to the temperature where everything transforms, to become a creative interaction of the elements water, earth and fire. We can see this interaction also in his watercolors which are closely connected to the "Tea Bowls". They are made in the same way of creating a "Tea Bowl" which are thrown in three moves on a wheel. The watercolors are painted in seriesof circular moves. All art works have the fractured surface, the movement of the shape and the subject of the color whose union gives raise in common. Phil Sims´ works speak in a subtle way of a strong language which has a meditative and calm vibrancy despite a bold and lively appearance.
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