New York, NY – From May 1 through June 14, 2024, Forum Gallery, New York, will present a special exhibition celebrating twenty-five years of Brian Rutenberg’s (b. 1965) art with Forum Gallery.
Brian Rutenberg: Celebrating 25 Years will showcase Brian Rutenberg’s vibrant, colorful abstract paintings inspired by the landscape of his birthplace, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in twenty-one works dating from 1998 to the present. Each painting is a highlight of his artistic evolution, while together the works in the exhibition illuminate the magnetic, enduring appeal of his art that has made Brian Rutenberg one of this country’s most popular painters.
Brian Rutenberg joined Forum Gallery shortly after his return from a year in Ireland on a Fulbright Scholarship. The formative experience cemented for the artist that while the landscape was a starting point for his paintings, they were not “about landscape.” Images refer to trees, ponds, and atmospheric hazes but these anchor points give way to color and love, turning Rutenberg’s paintings into deeply emotive portals to places of palpable energy and harmonious contrasts. Rutenberg recalls the words of Art Historian, Kenneth Clark “Ideas become fact through love,” “a great glaze that connects cultures” according to Rutenberg, and the great connector of his art throughout the past twenty-five years.
Robert Fishko, Director of Forum Gallery recalls:
“I was startled and amazed when I saw Brian Rutenberg’s painting for the first time, 26 years ago. The abstract landscape image… had the fresh boldness of fractal line, the intensity of near-synchronist color and the spontaneous surface of improvisation… To see his work mature and develop has been among the greatest gifts I’ve experienced in the art world.”
Brian Rutenberg attended the College of Charleston (SC) and the School of Visual Arts (NY). A Fulbright scholar (1997), he lives in New York and both of his children are enrolled in the College of Charleston. Brian Rutenberg: Celebrating 25 Years opens on May 1 with an opening reception with the artist from 5:30 to 7:30pm. On May 7 from 5:30 to 7pm Forum Gallery will host Brian Rutenberg and Jonathan Miller Spies, “In Conversation.”
Jonathan Miller Spies has spoken on collecting American art at Princeton University and CUNY Grad Center, written a monograph on the modernist John Marin, moderated a series of symposia with curators and scholars, and publishes Hanging Papers, a weekly newsletter on the history of American art.