Press Release | Robert Kushner | February 2008

Robert Kushner
February 7 - March 1, 2008

It is not an accident that today when the only absolute is there are no absolutes, no boundaries, no limitations the work of Robert Kushner comes to the fore. Once a leader of the Pattern and Decoration movement, he finds himself in the leadership of a new type of art, an art that joins Eastern traditions with European techniques. The result is painting that is unabashedly beautiful, resplendent with lavish form and luxurious color.

Its source is Kushner’s interest in cross-cultural exploration and his subsequent fascination with classic Japanese and Chinese art. Antique screens and sliding doors are his continuing focus, reviving and redefining them through the richness of his palette.

Kushner has in fact blended ancient Asian artifacts with a modernist’s interest in randomness and abstraction and with Western materials and sensibility.

The resulting work is non-representational and representational at the same time: spectacular flowers that float in negative and positive space, gold, silver and bronze leaf at one with the pigments. It’s a new kind of art that unabashedly beautiful. Robert Kushner’s work is included in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, as well as The Tate Gallery, London, England.