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Lot Essay
“I think my artwork is concise in the way they convey their intended meaning which is happiness. I’ve often thought of three words to describe my work as simple, beautiful and fun.” - Josh Sperling
With a background in furniture making and graphic design, Brooklyn-based artist Josh Sperling is renowned for his three-dimensional shaped canvases, which he refers to as “sculptural paintings”. By merging his interest in colour, furniture design and geometric abstraction from the 1960s, Sperling articulates a rich hybrid sensibility in his works. Dream Machine (2017) is a dynamic example featuring the artist’s signature forms – squiggles, swirls and funky geometrics – in an organic configuration. Like wriggling forms viewed under a microscope, supple pink squiggles in descending lengths are encircled within a moss green square. At the bottom, a single dot sits like a fragment of punctuation. Beneath their playful appearance, each of Sperling’s shaped canvas is meticulously crafted by stacking layers of plywood, forming an armature over which canvas is stretched and then hand-painted. The visible edges add not only rich texture, but also a sense of diagrammatic structure to his geometric forms.
Sperling’s practice is as steeped in design as it is in art history, and the artist borrows extensively from both, in particular hard-edge abstraction and Minimalism. Some of his most important influences include Frank Stella, Bridget Riley, Fernand Léger and KAWS. Stella’s humongous shaped canvases are an obvious precursor to Sperling’s sculptural paintings, while Riley’s bold, bright palettes are clearly reflected in his use of colour. In contrast to the geometric rigor of Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, however, Sperling’s works have a playful, tongue-in-cheek quality reminiscent of artists such as Keith Haring. He seeks to make his creations appear approachable and organic: straightforward and whimsical, as he believes life should be. From conception to execution, works such as Dream Machine blur the lines between paintings and sculpture, image and object. Its contrast between sinuous curves and strict geo-shapes, as well as between three-dimensional canvas and flat panels, only reinforces its irrepressible energy.
With a background in furniture making and graphic design, Brooklyn-based artist Josh Sperling is renowned for his three-dimensional shaped canvases, which he refers to as “sculptural paintings”. By merging his interest in colour, furniture design and geometric abstraction from the 1960s, Sperling articulates a rich hybrid sensibility in his works. Dream Machine (2017) is a dynamic example featuring the artist’s signature forms – squiggles, swirls and funky geometrics – in an organic configuration. Like wriggling forms viewed under a microscope, supple pink squiggles in descending lengths are encircled within a moss green square. At the bottom, a single dot sits like a fragment of punctuation. Beneath their playful appearance, each of Sperling’s shaped canvas is meticulously crafted by stacking layers of plywood, forming an armature over which canvas is stretched and then hand-painted. The visible edges add not only rich texture, but also a sense of diagrammatic structure to his geometric forms.
Sperling’s practice is as steeped in design as it is in art history, and the artist borrows extensively from both, in particular hard-edge abstraction and Minimalism. Some of his most important influences include Frank Stella, Bridget Riley, Fernand Léger and KAWS. Stella’s humongous shaped canvases are an obvious precursor to Sperling’s sculptural paintings, while Riley’s bold, bright palettes are clearly reflected in his use of colour. In contrast to the geometric rigor of Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, however, Sperling’s works have a playful, tongue-in-cheek quality reminiscent of artists such as Keith Haring. He seeks to make his creations appear approachable and organic: straightforward and whimsical, as he believes life should be. From conception to execution, works such as Dream Machine blur the lines between paintings and sculpture, image and object. Its contrast between sinuous curves and strict geo-shapes, as well as between three-dimensional canvas and flat panels, only reinforces its irrepressible energy.