John Gibson

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In his deceptively simple images of patterned balls on solid grounds, John Gibson manipulates painting’s elemental qualities, creating a fascinating tension between two- and three-dimensional space. His paintings marry the Modernist conception of a flat picture plane to a more classical notion of painting as an illusory realm—as he notes, “I’m always looking for this simultaneous rounding and flattening of form.”

Orson Welles famously remarked that the enemy of art is the absence of limitations. Indeed, making paintings of balls for the past twenty years has allowed Gibson’s practice to flourish. Rather than working from observation, he invents subjects by taking patterns he finds out in the world—in textbooks, in museums, in toy stores—and curving them visually, often collaging design elements onto spherical objects in the process. “Choosing the right pattern is crucial to the question of how the balls turn in space,” he says, “to how you get from one to another.” The resulting paintings seem to contain a powerful kind of potential energy, the spheres on the verge of rolling out of the composition and into reality. At the same time, they’re silent and still, restrained by the materiality of paint, the flatness of canvas.

Born Northampton, Mass., 1958

Education

  • 1980 B.F.A. Rhode Island School of Design
  • 1982 M.F.A Yale University
  • 1989-2005 Instructor, Drawing and Painting, Smith College North Hampton Mass.
  • 1996-2001 Visiting Instructor, Painting Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, R.I.
  • 1992 Visiting Instructor, Intaglio, Amherst College.
  • 1989-91 Instructor, Painting, Hampshire College, Amherst, Mass.

Solo Exhibitions

  • 2009 Caldwell Snyder Gallery, San Francisco,CA
  • 2007 Muse gallery, Jackson, WY.
  • 2006 Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY.
  • Gerald Peters Gallery, Sante Fe, NM.
  • 2005 Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 2004 Hampshire College, Amherst, MA.
  • Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY.
  • 2003 Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM.
  • 2002 Gerald Peters Gallery, New York, NY.
  • 2001 Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • Hodges Taylor Gallery, Charlotte, NC.
  • Wendy Evans Fine Art, New York, NY.
  • 2000 Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM.
  • 1999 Painting the Improbable, FMCC Johnstown, NY.
  • 1998 Wendy Evans Fine Art, New York, NY.
  • 1997 Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 1996 Fine Arts Center, University of Mass., Amherst, MA.
  • 1996 Rosen Gallery, Paris, France.
  • 1995 Perspective Fine Art, New York, NY.
  • Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM.
  • 1994 Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • Perspective Fine Art, New York, NY.
  • 1990 Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY.
  • 1989 Harcus Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 1988 Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY.
  • 1987 Harcus Gallery, Boston, MA.

Group Exhibitions

  • 2004 Manly 3, Gescheidle Gallery, Chicago, IL.
  • 2002 Art of the 20th Century, New York Armory, NY.
  • The Color Red…, Gerald Peters, Santa Fe, NM.
  • 1999 Reflections on Surfaces, Anne Reed Gallery, Sun Valley, ID.
  • 1997 5 College Faculty Drawing Show, UMASS, Amherst, MA.
  • 1996 Monoprints, Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • Printscape, Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 1995 New Prints, Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 1993 Fresh Paint, Miller Block Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 1992 Highlights from the Permanent Collection, UMASS, Amherst, MA.
  • 1991 Beyond Realism, Southern Alleghenies Museum of Art, PA.
  • 1991 37 Artists at Capitol Cities/ABC.
  • 1990 Talent, Allan Stone Gallery, New York, NY.
  • 1989 DeKooning, Kline and others, Allan Stone, New York, NY.
  • 1988 Great Expectations, Harcus Gallery, Boston, MA.
  • 1987 Estes and Others, Allan Stone, New York, NY.
  • Talent, Allan Stone, New York, NY.

Selected Public Collections

  • Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Museum at the Rhode Island School of Design.
  • Ackland Museum Chapel Hill, NC.
  • University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
  • Smith College Museum of Art, NorthHampton Mass.

Corporate Collections

  • Fidelity Investments Mass Mutual. Brown and Wood-NY.
  • Hallmark Corp. Sherman and Sterling, NY.
  • Wellington Mgmt. BankNorth.