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“Contemplative Spaces, Works on Paper” — Ink Paintings and Digital Giclée Images
University of Pennsylvania, Burrison Gallery, May 19 – June 29, 2012
Opening reception May 22, 5-7pm
The University Club at Penn, 2nd Floor, 3611 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA
This exhibition has nineteen new ‘still and quiet’ places based on my enso (Japanese calligraphic circle) ink paintings. These works-on-paper are ‘expressions of the moment’ having taken a lifetime of experience to develop.
The painting gesture is delicate, strong, immediate and timeless; the forms are enclosing and excluding. The wellspring, the source, of my large, substantive outdoor installations is shown in these small, fragile, almost ephemeral materials. http://www.jfuhrman.com/wordpress/installation2/contemplative-spaces-outdoor/
The works are filled with dynamic energy; yet, the images within their frames become contemplative—‘still and quiet’ with a monumentality and gravity that pull viewers into their inner subtlety.
Nine of the works affirm my profound connection to geologic process and to a sense of ‘deep time’ where the enso ink paintings merge with photographs of nightscapes, moon and sun reflections and the March 2012 solar flare (NASA).
The gestural, single stroke enso forms have been vital elements in the work since my first his experience with Martha Graham dance in the early 1980. I find that the enso painting is a time of stillness and quiet which permeates the ideas and forms of my sculpture –places of connection, reflection and contemplation.
This exhibition marks 50 years –almost to the day—since I was first introduced to art as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania less than two blocks from the gallery.