Roland Reiss: 1968 : Project Room
DIANE ROSENSTEIN is pleased to announce Roland Reiss: 1968, a solo exhibition of early-career fiberglass and resin paintings by the Los Angeles-based artist. Roland Reiss: 1968 opens in the Project Room on Saturday, September 12th, with a reception for the artist from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm. This is Reiss’ second exhibition with the gallery.
Having taken his MA at UCLA in 1957, Roland Reiss moved to Boulder and joined the art faculty of the University of Colorado. In his studio practice, by the late 1950s, Reiss sought to replace the gestural excesses of ‘action painting,’ in an effort to make his work more dimensional and sculptural. As new materials became available to artists in the early 60s, Reiss began work with acrylic paints and plastics (notably Plexiglas), foams, and resin. He created the work exhibited here – a breakthrough series of fiberglass and resin “paintings” in 1968. With titles like Red Slide and Bent Field, the molded resin surfaces are textured in positive or negative relief hexagons that Reiss sprayed in bright colors like red, green, and orange. The result is an ever-shifting and vibrational color field.
These pivotal works are among the first sculptural resin paintings: produced by Roland Reiss in Colorado, in synchronicity with both the Light and Space and Finish Fetish movements in Southern California. Despite the optical dynamism, there is a minimalism to the work that relates to the monochromatic oil and beeswax panel paintings produced by Brice Marden in New York at the same time. In essence, by 1968, the painting became a perceptual object.
