GARY LANG : BRAVE GESTURES

Film by Eric Minh Swenson. Music by Scott Hiltzik.
The Lancaster Museum of Art and History presents Gary Lang: Whim Wham an intimate selection of Lang's acclaimed circle paintings accompanied by his never before seen word paintings. The two bodies of work may at first appear unrelated, yet they are inextricably linked by a union of opposites and similarities―both through the process in which they are created and in Lang's quest for reconciling the space between beauty and pain in contemporary times.
Lang began working on his minimalist circle paintings in the 1980's and quickly became internationally renowned for his ability to engender a physical connection to the sublime through his radiating color combinations. When viewed from a distance, his paintings propel the viewer into an unrelenting optical experience that transcends everyday concerns. The colors blend and shift, deepen and soften, and awaken and pulsate in conversation with one another, taking the viewer on a phenomenological joy ride. As one moves closer to the work, the artist's hand―and his remarkable affection for the materiality of paint―is revealed.
In the 1970's, prior to the birth of his circle paintings, Lang had sustained a quiet practice of writing text on paper and painting words in books that he positioned on his paint mixing tables. He eventually began making word paintings in concert with his large canvasses. On the surface, the word paintings function as an immediate repository for the excess pigment left over from his monumental canvasses: he simply moves from the canvas to the paper to "clean" the brush. Lang's improvisational cleansing process ultimately yields words and phrases that expose his deeply poetic response to the concepts of truth, religion, power and tragedy. Lang has methodically practiced this private ritual since the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. Just days before 9 -11, Lang moved his family from their New York City loft―where the World Trade Center towers were visible from the kitchen window―to Southern California, where Lang was born. Lang expresses that this event turned him toward words "in an effort to understand how they are used, abused, and manipulated by agenda and temper as well as to serve the heart." He has equally found that he associates the words "real" and "true" with the momentary quality of painting in the here and now.