OPENING RECEPTION: 1ST THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 2018, FROM 5 - 8PM
Sullivan Goss – An American Gallery presents SIDNEY GORDIN: Just Put it Together, a new exhibition from the Estate of the Artist. Spanning more than half a century (1943-1991), the works in this exhibition explore the collage-like process of adding one element to another until a work takes shape that defined Gordin’s ouevre. This process unites a widely varied body of work - from the energetic brushwork of his early Abstract Expressionist experiments, to the angularity of his wood constructions, to the whimsy of his Bay Area work paintings and sculptures.
Born in Russia, Sidney Gordin (1918-1996) came to the United States at age four. He attended Brooklyn Technical High School where he showed an aptitude for drawing and zeroed in on his passion for art. He was later accepted at Cooper Union where he explored painting and drawing. In 1949, his focus shifted to sculpture. By 1953, the Whitney had acquired a sculpture, which started a long and fruitful relationship. Gordin was a professor at Sarah Lawrence, the New School for Social Research, and at UC Berkeley where he taught from 1958-1986.
Gordin’s work is experimental and process-oriented in nature. From 1939 on, he used a titling system that recorded his works of art in progression (i.e. #1-1943, #2-1943) separated out by media. It is clear that all of his mediums informed each other--intersecting planes in his bronze sculptures match those of his paper collages and curvilinear arabesques appear throughout his drawings, sculptures, and paintings. Gordin’s geometric sculptures were inspired, in part, by the intellectual rigor of Cubism and Futurism, but this work changed with his exposure to the PostWar Bay Area art scene, which encouraged him to explore biomorphic shapes, expressive brushwork, and natural materials like wood in his sculptures and constructions. A career long survey of Sidney Gordin’s works on paper, his wood constructions, and his paintings and sculpture will be on display in our contemporary gallery.
