Gary Stephan. Tape On Paper

About

Anders Wahlstedt Fine Art is pleased to present GARY STEPHAN: Tape on Paper. This is Stephan’s first exhibit with the Gallery. On view are eleven tape drawings on paper that pay tribute to Stephan’s formalist painting practice all while posing questions that challenge the conventions of drawing and image-making.

Throughout his artistic endeavor, Stephan has established himself as one who creates in the “dead center,” namely the intersection between the visual/representational and the emotional, evident in his abstract paintings in which simple tools and limited color palettes come together to undermine any attempt at coherent interpretations. This mode of working continues with his latest series of tape drawings, where layers of black and white tape are placed upon the most fundamental of canvases––––white paper. The simplistic presentation belies and in turn gives rise to a complex interplay that suggests yet questions and disrupts the dualism of light and shadow, of figure and ground, of positive and negative. 

In 46 (2019), for instance, strips of black tape of varying lengths and thicknesses are assembled along both the horizontal and vertical axes of the paper in a manner that vaguely conjures a three-dimensional rectangular prism. A window? A television screen? A square of a chocolate bar? The viewer is prompted to spend time exploring, draw associations, and ponder the meaning of the picture in front of them, as Stephan rarely ever dictates what is being presented. With these works, Stephan revives the tradition of abstraction and, through this process, pushes the medium of drawing into a dynamic, ever-evolving context. Furthermore, the tension between the precise linearity of the composition and the hand-crafted nature of cutting, layering, and applying tape to paper serves to inaugurate a dialogue between the exactitude of geometric forms versus the raw imperfections inherent in human creations, once again proving Stephan’s prowess as an artist who works from the “middle.”