Harold Ancart
“Traveling Light”
New York, 525 & 533 West 19th Street
On view in one gallery space will be a new series of paintings that depicts trees. These works were painted between Ancart’s Brooklyn studio and a makeshift outdoor studio in Los Angeles, which he traveled to during lockdown. Pointing to references as varied as René Magritte, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Piet Mondrian, who approached this subject matter in distinct ways, Ancart’s tree paintings blur form and color, figure and ground, and figuration and abstraction.
Harold Ancart, Untitled, oil stick and graphite on canvas in artist’s frame, 80 1/8 x 96 1/8 inches, 2020.
In the adjoining gallery space, there will be two multipanel canvases that situate the viewer between a mountain-scape and a seascape, both monumental in scale. These works are inspired in part by the artist’s encounter with the modernist landscape murals of the American painter Gottardo Piazzoni (1872–1945) permanently installed at the De Young Museum, San Francisco.
Image: Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020 (detail)
The exhibition constructs an immersive landscape experience, and together, the works on view comprise a meditation on the expansive possibilities of painting.
This exhibition is carbon neutral. The carbon footprint of the exhibition was calculated with the assistance of Atelier Ten and offset with a NY State based carbon sequestration program contributing to the capturing of landfill or livestock methane gas.
