Since the 1960s, American painter Harriet Korman has produced dynamic geometric abstractions that intentionally destabilise the pictorial plane, revealing infinite possibilities within simple compositions.
Read MoreBorn in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Korman studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and at Queens College, where she was taught traditional painting. It was only during her final year that Korman encountered works by artists like Agnes Martin and Robert Ryman, after which her painting practice shifted away from realism to become process-based.
Following graduation, Korman settled in New York's Lower East Side, where she shared a studio with artists Gordon Matta-Clark and Charles Simonds.
Known for their fluid arrangements, Harriet Korman's geometric abstractions expand the boundaries of perception by transforming simple propositions into curious juxtapositions of colour, form, and shape.
Korman's practice developed in the wake of the Minimalist and Conceptualist critique of traditional painting which took place in the 1950s and 60s, yet she embraced the two-dimensional rectangle others perceived as a limitation, pushing beyond its boundaries.
Early works from the late 1960s to the mid-70s sought to erase gestural strokes and mark-making through simple linear abstractions. In one untitled painting from 1969, a soft pink grid is rendered in loose strokes, with thin crayon lines intersecting the thicker vertical lines, both covered in a layer of white acrylic gesso that the artist has scraped with a palette knife to unite the layers.
These works are notable for their delicate visual appeal and simple conceptual underpinnings that do not place so much importance on the end product, unlike Minimalism. New York Times critic Roberta Smith has compared Korman's paintings to 'quietly radiant surfaces', which pulsate like a breath of air.
From 1976, Korman shifted to oil paints, creating works made with livelier colour palettes and looser and more experimental brushstrokes. Though decisive and articulated, Korman's geometric assertions are not forceful. While contained, they remain unconstricted; this has given the painter a reputation for her 'controlled spontaneous compositions'.
In one bright green and yellow painting from 1996, the grid structure is retained, through imperfect: shapes appear within travelling lines, vibrant in places while fading in others. Such compartmentalised geometric shapes would appear in black-and-white in following years, including densely worked circles, diamonds, pretzel shapes, and emblems.
Diving into the relationship between colour and form, paintings marked by rich hues and interlaced shapes followed Korman's monochrome series. Painted without white, lively optical illusions emerged from curious and fluid arrangements, as with the swirling yet contained Untitled (2004).
Deemed 'hand-made geometries', later geometric abstractions sought to explore the division of the painting's surface. They are noted for their spontaneous quality, in which hints of improvisation seem to emerge from what appear to otherwise be works of hard-edged abstraction.
Korman's dynamic formal explorations are echoed in later oil-stick drawings on paper, which recovered the basic rectangle as their focus. Concentric freehand rectangles drawn in primary colours later served as the framework for corresponding paintings that retained their uneven shapes, despite featuring bold colours, sharp lines, and grid-like structures, as with Untitled (2021).
In the paintings, colour and form are used to test the boundaries of visual perception through juxtapositions of light and dark tones and thick and thin lines, resulting in differing arrangements of nested rectangular shapes that expand or contract space.
Korman is the recipient of a 2013 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; a 2008 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; the 2006 Henry Ward Ranger Purchase Prize, National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts; and the 2003 American Academy of Arts Purchase Prize.
Harriet Korman's works have shown widely in Europe and the United States.
Solo exhibitions include Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2018); Häusler Contemporary, Munich (2015); Lennnon, Weinberg, Inc., New York (2014, 2008); Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles (2008); Daniel Weinberg Gallery, San Francisco (2002); Galerie m Bochum, Germany (1977); and Galerie Ricke, Cologne (1972, 1970).
Group exhibitions include Häusler Contemporary, Zurich (2018); Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2017); Museum im Kulturspeicher, Würzburg (2015); The Painting Center, New York (2014); National Academy Museum, New York (2011); MoMA PS1, New York (2007, 1977); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1995, 1974); Pratt Institute, New York (1974); and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1971).
Harriet Korman's Instagram can be found here.
Elaine YJ Zheng | Ocula | 2022
