Warren Isensee
WARREN ISENSEE
525 West 22nd Street
16 July - 28 August 2020
New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, Warren Isensee, 16 July - 28 August 2020
New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, Warren Isensee, 16 July - 28 August 2020
New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, Warren Isensee, 16 July - 28 August 2020
New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, Warren Isensee, 16 July - 28 August 2020
New York, NY: Miles McEnery Gallery, Warren Isensee, 16 July - 28 August 2020
Virtual Tour
Selected Works
Pillow Talk, 2018, Oil on canvas, 40 x 52 inches, 101.6 x 132.1 cm, MMG#31915
Deep Shit, 2018, Oil on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, 121.9 x 121.9 cm, MMG#31913
Rise and Shine, 2019, Oil on canvas, 38 x 38 inches, 96.5 x 96.5 cm, MMG#31916
Wild Kindness, 2019, Oil on canvas, 42 x 56 inches, 106.7 x 142.2 cm, MMG#32099
Prickly Goo, 2019, Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, 152.4 x 152.4 cm, MMG#31476
Interstellar Overdrive, 2019, Oil on canvas, 69 x 69 inches, 175.3 x 175.3 cm, MMG#31914
Out of Touch, 2020, Oil on canvas, 24 x 24 inches, 61 x 61 cm, MMG#32184
LOL, 2020, Oil on canvas, 40 x 45 inches, 101.6 x 114.3 cm, MMG#32098
As Promised, 2020, Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches, 127 x 127 cm, MMG#32182
Black Magic, 2020, Oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches, 127 x 127 cm, MMG#32183
Inner Outer, 2020, Oil on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, 152.4 x 152.4 cm, MMG#32181
Something Strange, 2020, Oil on canvas, 65 x 76 inches, 165.1 x 193 cm, MMG#32100
Press Release
NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to announce a presentation of new paintings by Warren Isensee. The exhibition will open on 16 July at 525 West 22nd Street and will remain on view through 28 August 2020. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring a text by Ken Johnson.
Flawlessly executed, Warren Isensee’s paintings present the viewer with a seductive and alluring assortment of shapes and colors. The various patterns and forms fade in and out, while simmering with the artist’s archetypal sense of humor and irony. Titles such as ‘Pillow Talk,’ ‘Rise and Shine,’ and ‘LOL’ playfully riff on phrases inherent to contemporary culture, highlighting Isensee’s negotiation of the line between reality, artifice and representation.
Patterns begin to delightfully pulsate and radiate through the work, in oscillations that are at once hypnotic and soothing. As Ken Johnson notes in his catalogue text Wiggly World: A Conversation with Myself About Warren Isensee’s New Paintings, “with their emphatically flat, frontal, and symmetrical compositions, the repetition and recursion of blobby forms outlined in black and in a tasty range of hues, from chocolaty browns and mossy greens to neon-bright pinks and yellows, all painted, with a precise, silky touch, they are optically dazzling.”
The paintings on display trace their origins to the artist’s series of delicate, miniature pencil drawings, rendered with a concise and single layer of color application. Observed in an historic moment of vast upheaval, unprecedented in living memory, Isensee’s complete body of work celebrates vibrancy, dynamism and spontaneous movement and ultimately imbues the viewer with a sense of optimism.
WARREN ISENSEE (b. 1956 in Asheville, NC) studied architecture at the University of Oklahoma before majoring in painting and graphic design. He received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 1999. He was included in the 2007 American Academy of Arts and Letters Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, receiving a Purchase Award.
Recent solo exhibitions include “A Decade of Drawings,” Danese/Corey, New York, NY; “Warren Isensee: New Paintings and Drawings,” Danese/Corey, New York, NY; “Warren Isensee: New Drawings,” Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY; and “Deja View,” Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL.
Recent group exhibitions include “20/20,” Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO; “STARS,” Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO; “Colored Pencil,” McKenzie Fine Art, New York, NY; “Casheesh,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; “Fool the Eye,” Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY; “ All Hell Breaks Loose,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; “ The Warmth of Winter,” The National Arts Club, New York, NY; “Black and Blue Plus Orange,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; “Dialogues: Drawings and Works on Paper,” Satellite Contemporary Gallery, Las Vegas, NV; “Geometrix: Line, Form, Subversion,” Curator’s Office @ Gallery 2112, Washington D.C.; “Manmade,” Holly Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TX; “Hanging Paper,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; “If Not For You” (curated by Sue and Phil Knoll), Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; “Infinity Mirror,” Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; “Twenty by Sixteen” (curated by Geoffrey Young), Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; “Geometric Obsession” (curated by Robert Morgan), Museum of Contemporary Art of Buenos Aires, Argentina; “House,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; “Twenty by Sixteen,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; “ Allure,” Jamie Brooks Fine Art, Costa Mesa, CA; “AUGUST a Haze Amniotic Our Dream Aether & Lens of Distance,” Geoffrey Young Gallery, Great Barrington, MA; and “Grey Full,” Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York, NY.
His work is included in numerous public and private collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas, Austin, TX; Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia, Italy; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Neuberger Berman Collection, New York, NY; Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS; Time Warner, Inc. , New York, NY; Wellington Management Company, Boston, MA; and West Collection, Oaks, PA.
Warren Isensee lives and works in New York, NY.
Publications
News
Warren Isensee | Hyperallergic
Review by John Yau
15 August 2020
Warren Isensee’s Breakthrough
"Isensee has gone from being a dutiful geometric abstractionist to defining his own trajectory, and gaining a verifiable freedom for himself."
Warren Isensee | Art & Object
Review by Paul Laster
14 August 2020
Figurative and Abstract Paintings Brighten NY Galleries
"After being idled for several months during the initial outbreak of the pandemic in New York, the city’s galleries, which are usually closed or merely offering group shows in the month of August, have a fine selection of one-person presentations taking place. With the dwindling likelihood of art fairs coming back to the Big Apple anytime too soon and the city’s museums still under lockdown, its galleries offer the best place to physically see art.
In this round-up of five standout solo shows, we discover three young female figurative painters—Grace Weaver, Rute Merk, and Sojourner Truth Parsons—that every art lover should have on their radar and two seasoned abstractionists—KATSU and Warren Isensee—working in solely original styles."
Warren Isensee | The New York Times
Review by Roberta Smith
5 August 2020
Four Art Gallery Shows to See Right Now: Warren Isensee
Over the past two or three years,Warren Isensee’s abstract paintings, while always good, have taken a sharp turn for the better. For nearly a decade Mr. Isensee, who has been exhibiting since 1998, cultivated a distinctive geometry of parallel lines whose softened edges and pulsing color contrasts conjured the tubular glow of neon, compartmentalizing them into squares and rectangles with black outlines.