Kurt Lightner. Spark

About

Harper’s is pleased to announce Spark, New York-based artist Kurt Lightner’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The presentation features new paintings by Lightner and opens on Thursday, January 4, 6–8pm, with a reception attended by the artist.

Across Spark, Lightner pays homage to the ancient woods he traversed throughout his upbringing. The artist was raised in Troy, Ohio, and comes from a multigenerational lineage of farmers who tended to the land and its native woods. He spent his childhood working and playing in this five-acre forest, which surrounded his family home. For Lightner, the verdant expanse bears the power of remembrance: the woods have seen perpetual annotation through the imprints of climactic evolution, social change, and familial memory.

The Emerald Ash Borer beetle, for example, has left its mark on the woods. The invasive insect, which feeds on ash, decimated the once-thriving population of ash trees in the forest. The fallen trees made room for abnormal clearings: no longer shaded by a canopy of foliage, light now floods the woods. This light takes center stage in the works that comprise Spark, glimmering across effulgent palettes.

In Lightner’s landscapes, tumbling branches repeatedly descend into prisms of pastels that illuminate the forest floor. Such is the case in EAB 4 and EAB 1. In the former, skeletons of trees lay bare amidst tangled cyan and yellow foliage. Hints of green matter and bright red flora are scattered throughout, as if visual reminders of new life in the wake of destruction. These symbols of prospective growth reappear in the latter: blush tones greet blooming shrubbery in between lifeless limbs and bark. Other times, like in EAB 3 (small Mayapple), the new growth completely eclipses the dead. Here, electric green leaves erupt from magenta earth, rendering the ashen bark barely visible in the background of the visual plane. Subtle pools of turquoise snake across the terrain, nourishing the healthy vegetation.

Lightner approaches these environmental scenes using techniques of collage. He develops stencils to draw intricate plant life and then aggregates and juxtaposes them onto canvas to construct distinctive compositions. To this end, much like the adaptive, yet organic cycles of life and death, Lightner’s process leans into improvisation. Form and color are malleable visual properties that help him chronicle the inconsistent patterns of the woods. The resultant works—brimming with luminous optimism—capture the great loss endured by the terrain, but also, the latent potential that resides within regeneration.

Kurt Lightner (b. 1971, Troy, OH) received a BFA from Columbus College of Art and Design in 1993, and an MFA from School of Visual Arts in 2004. Most recently, his work has been the subject of solo presentations at Harper’s, New York (2023); Mark Moore Fine Art, online (2022); Contemporary Art Matters, Columbus (2019 and 2018); Joseph Editions, Columbus (2016); Rebecca Ibel Gallery, New York (2011); and Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2006). Lightner has participated in notable group exhibitions, including Driving Forces: Contemporary Art from the Collection of Ann and Ron Pizzuti, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus (2019); LIC, NYC, Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City (2007); and Greater New York, MoMA PS1, Long Island City (2005). Reviews of his work have appeared in Artforum, Frieze, and New York Times, among other publications.