ART CITIES:London-Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold has, since the 1950s, explored line and color on supports ranging in shape, size, and dimension. Committed to abstraction as a means of communication, he has worked within a consistent geometric vocabulary to produce a varied body of paintings and works on paper. His career has developed through an evolution of techniques for the application of paint onto his chosen surface—first plywood and Masonite, and later, beginning in 1968, stretched canvas.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

Moving away from the conventions of paintings, Robert Mangold introduced shaped canvases, working with symmetrical and asymmetrical forms as well as curvilinear edges. Robert Mangold’s exhibition “A Survey 1981–2008”, the artist’s first solo show in the UK in 12 years,  feature significant paintings spanning three decades, showcasing Mangold’s lifelong balancing of shape, line, and color, the paintings on view epitomise the conceptual and aesthetic rigour of his six-decade career, while also demonstrating an enduring will to challenge definitions of painting. In the 1960s Mangold emerged as one of the most original and incisive voices shaping the discourse on painting in America. From the outset, Mangold’s works explored the most elemental components of his art form, in doing so examining the very nature of painting. Integral to Mangold’s thinking has always been a questioning of the primacy of the rectangular format. Beginning with the Walls and Areas of the mid-sixties, and right on through to today, Mangold’s engagement with shaped canvases has allowed him to push his work beyond the conventions of traditional painting. Bringing together vibrant but subtle color combinations, hand-drawn lines, and an innovative use of form, Mangold’s ‘x’ or ‘+’ paintings, such as “X Within X (Red-Orange)” (1981) and “Aqua/Green/Orange + Painting” (1983), exist somewhere between the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional; these works simultaneously insist on the ‘flatness’ of painting as well as its objecthood. Mangold’s works always emphasize the relationship between the canvas and the wall and with the ‘x’ and ‘+’ paintings that relationship becomes even more apparent. These ideas are expanded in paintings such as “Green Ellipse/Gray Frame” (1989) in which Mangold juxtaposes the active painted surface with the lines created by the unusual configuration of the diptych. Further, in “Column Structure: works of 2006, Mangold continues to take a sculptural approach to his painting by joining multiple panels and tying them together with the elegant curl of a pencil line. Joining panels to create expansive canvases recurs throughout Mangold’s practice. “Curved Plane/Figure VIII, Study” (1995) and “Red/White Zone Painting II” (1996) are each made up of three panels with a curved top edge. In the latter, Mangold paints over the canvas joins to create an incongruity between the painted image and the structure of the support. Rather, it remains open to the surprising twists and turns of his intuition and curiosity, often referring to his earlier works and re-examining previously raised questions. “Ring Image C” (2008) is yet a step further in Mangold’s exploration of shaped canvases. Like his ‘x’ and ‘+’ paintings, Mangold plays with positive and negative space: the painting itself surrounds the void inherent to the ring form, incorporating the wall into the work. For Mangold, the “Ring” series is a way of ‘setting up problems for the viewer’.

Photo: Robert Mangold, Ring Image C, 2008, acrylic, graphite and black pencil on canvas, 96″ / 243.8 cm diameter, © Robert Mangold, Courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery

Info: Pace gallery, 6 Burlington, Gardens London, Duration: 12/4-22/5/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00 (by appointment only, book here), www.pacegallery.com