R H Quaytman | the artist

Biography and art, auction, artworks, interview, statement, website:

R.H. Quaytman
A careful selection of paintings by R. H. Quaytman fill a small room on the fourth floor that is dominated by a bright, trapezoid-shaped window. The outline of that window is a recurring figure in some of the paintings, part of a layering of references that acknowledge the exhibition venue, the artistic and historical context of the artist’s work, and the optical condition of all visual art but especially of painting…

R.H. Quaytman
R. H. Quaytman’s paintings to date, which are organized into chapters, can be seen as an ongoing archive in which each new painting or series is informed by what came before it. A single image or event acts as a starting point for each chapter. For example, Distracting Distance, Chapter 16, which was specifically conceived for the Biennial, references the Whitney’s building and history…

R.H. Quaytman interview
Since 2001, R. H. Quaytman has been working on an ongoing series of paintings, “Chapters 1 – 16.” Each chapter is bound together by a unifying theme, yet the images flickering across the surface of the wood panels vary greatly—silkscreened snapshots, newspaper clippings, blinding Op Art patterns, stark geometric abstractions. Culled from or referencing a range of sources, even at first glance, these pictures are oddly familiar. They seem to point beyond themselves, evoking some vast collective image archive of the twentieth century…