WARREN ISENSEE

Miles McEnery Gallery is delighted to present an exhibition of new paintings by Warren Isensee, on view from 2 February through 11 March 2023 at 515 West 22nd Street. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue featuring text by Charlotta Kotik.

Over his nearly three-decade career, Warren Isensee has captured and honed the line between fluidity and structure. Coming from a family background of craftsmen and evangelists, coupled with his early career experiences of house painting and nuclear technical illustrating, Isensee’s compositional process has always been rooted in, as he states, “classic modernist ideas with a spiritual twist.”

At once organic and acutely technical, Isensee’s compositions pulse with the energy and optics of illusionary color. Painted freehand, one is hard-pressed to visually accept the precision he achieves. Filtered through the rigidity of craft and a strict adherence to symmetry, the paintings culminate in free-flowing improvisation with undercurrents of an inherent lyricism.

In this newest body of work, rectilinear canvases encapsulate the seemingly exponential expansion of forms while ricocheting vibrations of contrasting palettes are contained within hard-edge boundaries. With titles alluding to sensations of touch, sight, and sound, undulating lines draw one into the endless portals of abstraction. Step back from the painting, and the viewer is engulfed with the vibrant environment that Isensee has created.

Warren Isensee (b. 1956 in Asheville, NC) studied architecture at the University of Oklahoma before majoring in painting and graphic design. In 1999, he received the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant and, in 2007, received the Purchase Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters after participating in the annual Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts.

His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Danese/Corey, New York, NY; Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami, FL; Massimo Audiello, New York, NY; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; Nina Freudenheim Gallery, Buffalo, NY; Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY; and Tricia Collins Contemporary Art, New York, NY.

Isensee has been included in group exhibitions at institutions including the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, NY; College of Saint Rose, Albany, NY; Elaine L. Jacob Gallery, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI; Herter Gallery, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; Museum of Contemporary Art, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, NY; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, KS; and The National Arts Club, New York, NY.

His work may be found in the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; 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; and The Penn Art Collection, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, among others.

The artist lives and works in New York, NY.

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Selected Works

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