Between Structure and Chaos

The artists in this exhibition let go of their impulse to control compositions by allowing chaotic elements of chance, circumstance, and contingency to influence their processes. Drips, scratches, pours, and bleeds move across the surfaces of their artworks seemingly at random, and yet clear forms emerge. Our imaginations might find sunsets, mountains, waterfalls, city streets, or human figures in these images, but these apparitions soon dissolve into pure color, line, and shape. Refined abstractions from the 1960s are at the heart of our Museum’s collection in the form of paintings, prints, and photographs by Francile Downs, Sam Gilliam, Lee Krasner, Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Joan Mitchell, Edward Ruscha, and Zao Wou-Ki. 

 

Fifty years ago, Priscilla Colt, the founding director of UK Art Museum, started building a collection around her interest in the universal language of abstraction. This exhibition situates later acquisitions around two paintings purchased during her tenure—an Edo-period Japanese screen and Stephen Greene’s Green Dot.  Joan Mitchell’s painting is included in celebration of the centenary of the artist’s birth. 

 

IMAGE: 

Joan Mitchell, Untitled, circa 1956, oil on canvas. Collection of the UK Art Museum, purchase: The National Endowment for the Arts, Patrons of the John Jacob Niles Benefit Concert and Friends of the Art Museum.