Gary Lang

Throughout his long career, Lang has always meditated on painting and techniques. Whether he is creating a painting, “painting” a flower garden, or more recently, creating a video piece based on the process of painting which ends with layer upon layer of color, the same way Lang paints, his final word is always on the painting process.

In a 1988 article for Art in America, Stephen Westfall wrote:

“In Lang’s paintings, a refreshed modernist classicism stands forth. What makes them modern is not a nostalgia for purist geometry and interactive color, but rather a contemporary awareness of the virtues of equivocation.”

— Courtesy of Quint Gallery

ARTIST STATEMENT

My painting process is a vehicle for crossing the threshold. Simply put, it is a spiritual adventure that employs discipline and savors changeability. The wellspring source of the work is a mutating truth, which is what I nurture and what I am.

It has been said that the work has an uplifting affect on the viewer. This is not surprising to me when I consider that the process is ultimately a pleasure driven meditation on accumulating and organizing energy, while investigating the potential of color. The completion of a painting can take from several months to a few years. For me, they are testimonials, and the process an event.

The paintings define infinity in their own terms, and are visual odysseys that both welcome and hold the viewer in epic time and space. The painted object is a vehicle for transforming the moment, the power of which is unleashed in its presence.

— Gary Lang, NYC, 1998