An exhibition of new work by Connecticut artist Jonathan Perlowsky ran from June 1st to July 7th in the summer of 2013 at Morrison Gallery. It was Perlowsky’s second exhibition at the Morrison Gallery and follows a highly successful show in 2009. The exhibit will open with a reception from 5-7 pm. Gallery owner William Morrison said the new exhibition showcased Perlowsky’s depth and versatility – vibrant drip paintings on mirror, bold stripe paintings on wood, as well as works on paper. “The new stripe paintings are particularly striking, executed with a precision and thoughtfulness that only Perlowsky could achieve,” Morrison said.
The exhibition also featured large diptychs of piano lacquer and acrylic paint on birch. Perlowsky’s diptychs create a strong visual juxtaposition– one panel a luminous neon abstraction in his drip style and the other a solid minimalist panel, with just enough translucency to see the wood grain of the birch.
Jonathan Perlowsky grew up in Litchfield County and began painting while in his teens, between undergraduate studies at Rhode Island School of Design and stints working for his father, a farmer and founder of an estate services firm with clients from the New York worlds of music and the arts.
After a debut show at the Washington (CT) Art Association, Perlowsky, then 28, began receiving recognition that culminated in a solo exhibit in 1981 at the Westbroadway Gallery, one of the first breakaway venues to usher in the vibrant SoHo art scene in Manhattan. It was the first of five solo exhibits there. Others followed at the Horizon, Erotics and Atria galleries.
It was during this period that Perlowsky, living and painting in New York and showing at the Westbroadway Gallery, introduced the use of mirrors, glitter and Day-Glo pigment in abstract compositions, foreshadowing a genre that continues today in the work of such artists as Anselm Reyle and Imi Knoebel.
By the mid-‘70s, the artist was producing large abstract works on raw silk, stretched over mirrors that were reminiscent of Josef Albers and Mark Rothko. After moving through a brief period of geometrically shaped canvases using a restricted color palette for a tromp l’oeil three-dimensional effect, Perlowsky shifted to real three-dimensional works in hues of gray, created on canvas stretched over elaborate mahogany forms. “These were gorgeous, but so complex to design and create that the effort was just brutal,” recalls Perlowsky. “The blueprints alone took several months to complete.” The artist then shifted to standing glass panels---a medium he would experiment with consistently over the next three decades. He began by lining up three or four panels parallel or at angles to each other and painting them with the thinnest of stripes of different hues: fine stripes “bordering on nothingness”, as Perlowsky describes them.
