OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

Imperfect Abstractions

John Obuck

November 5 - 27, 2004
Reception: Friday, November 5, 5:30 - 7:30 pm

O·H+T gallery is pleased to present Imperfect Abstractions, an exhibition of new paintings by John Obuck.

Obuck's new works are a departure from the square, monochromatic paintings he exhibited at O·H+T in January 2003. Though still influenced by planar abstractions of the early 20th Century (Cubists, Constructivists, etc.), the new paintings combine flat, paintedimages with constructed parts to establish a dialogue between two and three dimensional elements. In Ventriloquist, red, blue, ochre, grey, and black dots are arranged in a grid on a square white canvas. A smaller white square with one grey dot is suspended at the end of a silver rod that projects from the right side of the painting. The shapes in the larger square are energized by the interaction with its offspring, and what began as a non-objective painting is morphed into a quirky object.

Obuck's paintings continue to address formal issues such as the relationship between figure and ground, materials and texture, and the density and weight of the color.He also explores the nature of abstraction in these works. "In 1989 I became aware of the Imperfect Abstraction but could not conjure up an image to go along with the idea of imperfection. Only in the last year did I see it as a way to make a viable painted image... it has given me a way to illustrate the imperfect as perfectly possible."

John Obuck lives in New York and Arizona. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, and has been awarded the Rome Prize Fellowship in Painting, the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant. His work is included in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Cincinnati Art Museum, Chase Manhattan Bank and General Electric Corporation. This is his first one-person show at O·H+T gallery.