BE THERE
Ray Kass 2007Presented by Baumgartner Gallery January 12, 2007- February 14, 2007Ray KassJohn Cage: Selected WatercolorsJohn Cage’s watercolor paintings in this exhibition were selected from approximately 120 paintings produced in two series, New River Watercolors, 1988 and River Rocks and Washes, 1990, that Cage painted at the Mountain Lake Workshop in the New River Valley of the Virginia Appalachian Mountains * Cage’s paintings comprise an important contribution by the composer, writer and artist to the body of nearly 1000 unique visual art works that he produced during the last fifteen years of his life. The visual simplicity of his late paintings made his strategic use of “chance operations” in music, writing, and printmaking more accessible to public understanding. The watercolors shown here reveal a dynamic interaction with his innovative music notation, drawings, and in particular his printmaking experience at Crown Point Press (1978 – 1992). His watercolor paintings, like his graphic works, demonstrate a profound sense of beauty not usually associated with Cage’s dismissal of conventional aesthetics. An intrinsic sense of beauty, in fact, is at the very center of the experience that one may have in encountering his work. * A diary essay by Ray Kass describing Cage’s watercolor painting experiences at the Mountain Lake Workshop has been published in Writings Through John Cage's Music, Poetry, and Art, ed. By Bernstein and Hatch, Univ. of Chicago Press, 2001, (essay) Cage at the Mountain Lake Workshop, pgs. 244 - 259. Ray Kass: New Work - "Trays and Tondos" Ray Kass’ paintings are inspired by nature while also contextualizing elements of the artist's studio practice. The works included in this exhibition highlight a large assemblage of aluminum trays containing residual patterns of dried watercolor paint that Kass utilized in creating an ongoing series of multi-paneled polyptych” paintings. The lightly toned or "smoked" papers papers covering the panels are painted separately with thin layers of watercolor randomly applied through stencils and fabric scrims. And then coated with a fine surface of shaved beeswax and stretched over the geometrically shaped panels. The assembled panels combine to create somewhat irregular “tondo”, or circular images, suspended in luminous or watery-looking rectangles. The energy that resides in the “tondos” is magnified by their apparent random placement in close proximity in groups of three or more on the walls. Fully as alluring as the tondos themselves, these "painted" trays offer up their dried residue as a visual record of their roles in the creative process.
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