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Phil Sims |
The Baukunst Galerie opens on Saturday, 29 October 2005 from 7.00 p.m. to 10 p.m., with an introduction by Dr. Martin Engler (curator, Kunstverein Hannover) an exhibition of the works by the American artist Phil Sims. It is already the second great solo-exhibition of Phil Sims in this gallery. In the exhibition a pointed selection of his recent monochrome paintings is presented. At the same time, from 22 October 2005 to 12 February 2006, the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus in Munich shows another solo-exhibition entitled “Emotion of Color“ with paintings the artist has created especially for these showrooms.
Phil Sims was born 1940 in Richmond, California (USA). From 1964 to 1965 he studied at San Francisco Art Institute. In 1977 he moved to New York until he changed residence again in 2001, when he spent a year in Santa Fé, New Mexico. After that he moved his studio to Pennsylvania, where he still lives and works. His paintings are in possession of international collections and museums and were already presented in several exhibitions in Europe and the United States: Besides the installation in the Kunstmuseum Bonn (2000), the Kunstverein Bentheim in Neuenhaus (2001) and the Kunstraum Fuhrwerkswaage in Cologne (2002) presented major solo-exhibitions of Phil Sims in Germany. After the Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus the Westfälisches Landesmuseum in Münster will be next to display his paintings in a great solo-exhibition in 2006. Inter alia Sims‘ works are part of the collections of the Erzbischöfliche Diözesanmuseum Köln, the Kunsthalle Kiel (D), the Musée d‘ Art Contemporain in Lyon (F), the Collections Panza di Biumo in Varese (I), the Scipps Institute in La Jolla (California, USA) and the Malmö Konsthall (S).
For the first time in 1984 in an exhibition of the Williams College of Art in Massachusetts eleven European and American painters were presented under the term „Radical Painting“. Phil Sims was among them. As well as Marcia Hafif and Joseph Marioni he provided his studio for their meetings. Characteristic for this group is the attempt to define a position between continuity and dissociation from the tradition of painting. The drive the painting received in the fifties and sixties by the New York School, especially by Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Clifford Still, is propelled by Phil Sims and the „Radical Painters“. Newman, Rothko and Still have covered the surface with color in such a way, that every point has the same importance for the painting as a whole. Color had priority.
Phil Sims inherits this overall and the priority of color and takes a step ahead by deciding to create a monochrome image area. The term ‘monochrome’ in reference to his paintings has to be merely used as differentiation from the Colorfield-Painting since Sims never separates a canvas into several colorfields. However, he does not use just a singular color either. Every painting consists of many layers of different colors with variable opacity. The additive construction of the constituent layers determines the visible spectrum of the color on the surface of the master screen: Some shades generate their effect as an almost invisible changing of tone and temperature, others so blatant that they withdraw from simple declaration as ‘red’, ‘blue’ or ‘green’.
Sims paints his paintings as exact as possible in the height they will be seen in the end. The larger the image area, the more freehanded are his gestures of painting and the wider is the used brush. This way the artist gives consideration to the larger distance from which the spectator looks at the painting. Phil Sims applies the paint in short horizontal and vertical strokes on the rough surface of the canvas. Although his ductus leveled out during the years and the layers in some paintings are more transparent, it is never generating a smooth and even surface. The structure breaks up the characteristics of color and originates its complexity in all specifications. By enlargement of the surface it enables the light to pass through the layers from all directions to the canvas at the bottom where it is radiated back – giving the painting an intensive luminosity. This way the light is bounded to the color and emerges as a material substance. By the interaction of gesture, structure and light the paintings of Phil Sims make perception of color observably.
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view of the exhibition
at the Baukunst Galerie
2005-2006
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view of the exhibition
at the Baukunst Galerie
2005-2006
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view of Phil Sims studio
in Pennsylvannia
2005
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