OHT Gallery Boston

Previous Exhibits

New Paintings

Carl Ostendarp

September 9 - Oct 1, 2005
Reception: Friday, September 9, 5:30-7:30pm

O·H+T gallery is pleased to open its 2005 - 2006 season with New Paintings by Carl Ostendarp. Ranging in scale from large (100" x 47") to postcard-size (5" x 7"), Ostendarp's spare works, painted in what Ken Johnson refers to as "broad planes of rich peculiar color," are visually direct and wryly humorous.

Hands, feet, keys, scissors, beans, drips, horizons, hearts, letters, clouds . . . Carl Ostendarp's imagery reveals his interest in the personal and the personally iconic. Working from a range of influences (art historical, popular culture, human relationships, language, landscape, etc.), his deadpan images trigger idiosyncratic associations to provide the viewer with an uncanny visual and psychological experience.

Ostendarp's nimble manipulations of scale and figure-ground relationships pay homage to the works of Arp and Miro. Frugal, cartoon-like images and evocative words suggest Pop, while flatly painted rectangles punctuated by spare imagery indicate an interest in the Color Field painting of Newman. Though he acknowledges a connection with abstract painting of the last century, assigning Ostendarp's work to this category would be simplistic. Instead, these influences seem to act as guideposts as he follows his own quirky path to create personal narratives on contemporary culture and the human condition.

Carl Ostendarp has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. He has had recent solo exhibitions at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York, Galerie Rolf Ricke, Cologne, and Gilles Peyroulet et Cie, Paris. His work is included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of Art, the Chicago Art Institute, Museum fur Moderne Kunst Frankfurt am Main, and the Walker Art Center. Ostendarp currently teaches at Cornell University and resides in Ithaca, NY. This is his first one-person exhibition at O·H+T, where he was included in the January, 2004 exhibition Happy, curated by Ryan Steadman.