Paul Resika: Recent Paintings
Part II: May 17 – June 9, 2023
Reception: Wednesday, May 17th from 6-8 PM
 

Bookstein Projects is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent paintings by Paul Resika. This is the artist’s thirteenth show with Bookstein Projects.

Paul Resika: Recent Paintings will be an exhibition in two parts. A full-color catalogue with an essay by Vincent Katz will be available.

The first part of the exhibition will run from April 20 – May 12, 2023. It will feature paintings from the artist’s two latest series: End of Day and Free and Easy. In the End of Day series, a blazing sun, stripped down to its essential spherical shape, is shown moments before its sets on the low horizon line of the ocean beneath it. Both sky and sun vary in fiery shades of oranges and yellows. The Free and Easy series, by contrast, is vertical in its composition and depicts the bright white moon instead of the sun.  A stirring water, executed in quick brushstrokes, articulates the bottom edge of the composition.

The second part of the exhibition will run from May 17 – June 9, 2023. It will feature two monumental square paintings – Cerulean and Tangelo – each measuring 76 x 76 inches and depicting vast triangles that resemble sails. In the catalog essay for the exhibition, Vincent Katz writes, “There is something Platonic about some of the imagery in these paintings. It is based on intense observation, years of looking, during which the artist has consolidated in his mind essential aspects of what things look like. This ideal image, if it is that, is then disrupted, or made alive, by the actual application of paint. Looking, thinking, painting, and rethinking affect each other, each adding to the project, each capable of suggesting adjustments, until the very last minute.”

Paul Resika (b. 1928, New York, New York) studied under Hans Hofmann as a teenager in New York and Provincetown before departing for Venice and Rome in 1950 to study the old masters. After casting aside Hofmann’s abstract principles, his Italian palette turned sober and descriptive. Upon his return to the United States, Resika devoted himself increasingly to the exploration of light and color, and the synthesis of abstraction and representation. Over his eight decade-long career, Resika has exhibited at the Peridot Gallery, Graham Modern, Long Point Gallery, Provincetown, Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, Meredith Long & Company, Houston, Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects, New York and Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, New York. Resika splits his time between New York and Truro, Massachusetts.

Resika’s work is included in the collections of the Hood Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Addison Gallery among numerous others. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1984) and has been elected Academician at the National Academy of Design (1978) and the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1994).

Paul Resika: Recent Paintings will be on view from April 20 – June 9, 2023. An opening reception for Part I of the exhibition will be held on Thursday, April 20th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. An opening reception for Part II of the exhibition will be held on Wednesday, May 17th from 6:00 – 8:00 PM. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 11:00 am to 6:00 pm or by appointment. To make an appointment or for additional information and/or visual materials, please contact the gallery at (212) 750-0949 or by email at info@booksteinprojects.com.