“As artists who came of age in the 1960s and 70s,

John Duff, Ron Gorchov, and Alain Kirili share a life-long

passion for materials, process and the object...

All three are vested —  often rapturously, obsessively —

in the phenomenological.”

— Lilly Wei, Exhibition Curator

John Duff For over thirty years, John Duff has advanced the language of Minimalism by using precise geometric shapes and formulas combined with references to the more inexact, natural world. Within his treatment of interior and exterior space, he navigates paths of workmanlike invention by devising sequential forms based on mathmatical principles including Euclidean geometry, knot theory, and Penrose tiling.

While the starting points for the two sculptures selected for the exhibition may appear arbitrary, the formal and structural conditions behind Duff’s handling of opposing relational systems including mass and void, and logic and fate, ultimately achieve coherence.

Constructed according to basic geometric principals, Cosa Mentale, 2008, encompasses a series of tetrahedron-shaped steel rods that spiral outward in separate directions and at opposing scales from a fixed plaster center point. In order to resolve this asymmetrical dissonance, end points of equal size bring both sides into balance via an intricate visual equation that resembles a snake biting its own tail. Veering away from this type of linear grounding, Duff returns to his initial adopted medium of clay in Daddy’s Die, 2008 (pictured), a sculpture whose organic shape and connective tissue reflect a looser, more idiosyncratic form of applied theory. References to the five die that Duff’s father carried with him throughout World War II along with Marcel Duchamp’s theory of canned chance form narrative layers that carve a circuitous conceptual path between a myriad of entry and exit points. While the potential for turbulence and chaos is implicity harbored within each roll of the dice, Daddy’s Die asserts that with each consecutive toss, a systematic logic governed by finite variables exists and ensures that chance can be controlled.

John Duff (b. 1943, Lafayette, Indiana) received his B.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute. Included among his extensive exhibition history are recent solo exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and Knoedler & Company, New York, along with group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others. Honors include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Theodoran Award and Fellowship. His sculptures are part of the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, the Los Angeles Museum of Art, California, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, the Metropilitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York among others. He lives and works in New York.

Ron Gorchov A pioneer of the shaped canvas, Ron Gorchov has spent almost 40 years developing and refining various permutations of the curved picture surface. For this exhibition, he draws inspiration from the American watercolor painting tradition in order to reveal new visual spaces, transcendent forms, and color harmonies that capture and convey the mutability of atmosphere through a new series of works on paper.

Applying wet color onto a wet surface, Gorchov makes maximum use of the movement harbored within the topography of his chosen, roughly-textured Indian paper. Subtractions do not exist, only immediate and ephemeral sensations are recorded thus allowing for a degree of accident to seep in as ghosts of initial graphite pencil marks remain, colors pool and spread, and drips occur.

Complex emotions and perceptions are distilled into simple, shape-shifting plinth and rock forms set against veils of striking, color-filled backgrounds that evoke “places” both undetermined and immediate. Manipulating color through layering and hue, Gorchov creates shapes and values that insinuate a feeling of depth and atmosphere. Monochromatic washes in tones of cerulean blue, pale green, and vibrant yellow loom in the background and enhance the mystery of his gestures by evoking realms of fertile, expansive spaces teeming with possibilities.

Ron Gorchov (b. 1930, Chicago, IL) attended the University of Mississippi, Oxford, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Awards and honors include a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship Award for Painting and a National Endowment for the Arts Award for Painting. Recent exhibitions include the Nicholas Robinson Gallery, New York, in collaboration with Vito Schnabel, Vito Schnabel, New York, and P.S. 1, Long Island City. His paintings are part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. Gorchov lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Alain Kirili For over 30 years, Alain Kirili’s evocative and highly developed abstract bronze, steel, aluminum, terra cotta, and concrete sculptures have vitally revealed the physicality, sexuality, and emotionality of being. In marked contrast to the sterile virtuality that defines human existence in the 21st century, his new series of terra cotta and iron sculpture, and graphite on velum drawings together form a timeless dialogue between pure emotion and the pleasures of tactility.

Marked by tremendous dexterity of form, Funambule, 2009, reveals the assurance and lightness of touch that comes with maturity. Alluding to the delicate balance between life and death, masculinity and femininity, the appearance of irregular, syncopated patterns of excised and protruding marks along the length of each iron rod heighten the degree of surface tension and add to the anthropomorphic effect. Molded by hand, voluptuously-dense, terra cotta works on view entitled Modeles, 2009 (pictured), are also rife with sensuality. Their intertwining, undulating, flesh-like forms exhibit an erotic energy that recalls moments of creation and summation.

The act of modeling forms out of terra-cotta, or of forging metal by modulating heat into a hard medium to render it supple, represents both a deeply sensual moment and an irrevocable form of communion for the artist. As expressions of non-verbalized presence, Kiril’s recent works on views articlate his desire to achieve a state of completeness in which masculine and femine energies meld into one.

Alan Kirili (b. 1946, Paris, France) exhibited his first sculpture in 1972 at the Sonnabend Galley, Paris, France. Included among his extensive exhibition history are recent solo exhibitions at the IVAM Museum, Valencià, Spain and the New York Studio School. Dialogue exhibitions include Alain Kiril & Gaston Lachaise at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York, and installations of Segou and Totems at Jardin du Palais-Royal, Paris, A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Sculpture at the Musée D’Orsay, Paris, Grand Commendement Blanc at the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, and Hommage à Charlie Parker, at the Espace Massena, Paris. His sculpture is part of the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas, the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France, the Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France, and the Musée Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, among others. He lives in New York and Paris.