Berry Campbell proudly presents Gemini, its third solo exhibition of works by the important Color Field painter, Larry Zox (1937-2006). The exhibition is accompanied by a 20-page catalogue with an essay by Patricia L Lewy, Ph.D., director of the Friedel Dzubas estate and author of the Friedel Dzubas catalogue raisonné. Gemini is comprised of 20 paintings and works on paper from 1963 to 1969 and is on view November 22 – December 22, 2023.
Zox, along with Frank Stella and Kenneth Noland, played a central role in the Color Field movement and helped to define geometric abstract painting in the 1960s. Zox uses the framework of hard-edged painting as a starting point. The recurring motif in Zox’s Gemini series, a flattened four-pointed star, serves as a visual tool for contemplating color relationships and tensions. With an expert understanding of color and their relationships to each other, this star motif can shift from dynamic and daring in one painting to ethereal and contemplative in the other. Zox’s Gemini series boldly positions color as the predominant force: it becomes the subject and the verb propelling the story.
In a 1968 review for Artforum, Emily Wasserman eloquently dissected the Gemini series, noting, “the range of coloristic effects which these paintings explore—some vastly more surprising and pleasing than others—points to a vital combination in Zox’s work, where color is not compromised by the needs of structural organization, but is, instead, coordinated with it.”
Zox began to receive attention in the 1960s, when he was included in several groundbreaking exhibitions of Color Field and Minimalist art, including Shape and Structure (1965), organized by Henry Geldzahler and Frank Stella for Tibor de Nagy, New York, and Systemic Painting (1966), organized by Lawrence Alloway for the Guggenheim Museum. In 1973–74, the Whitney’s solo exhibition of Zox’s work gave recognition to his significance in the art scene of the preceding decade. In the following year, he was represented in the inaugural exhibition of the Hirshhorn Museum, which acquired fourteen of his works.
Zox is represented in over one hundred museum collections. In addition to the Hirshhorn, his work is included in the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Tate Modern, London; the Neues Museum, Bremen, Germany; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Dallas Museum of Art.
