| Andy Spence's (b. 1947) prints are closely measured studies in geometric abstraction that hover somewhere between a language of recognizable signs and pure shape. Precisely layered grids and arcs interact with one another in shallow spaces, enhanced by Spence's reductive color palette. His concentrated compositions surprise us with how little visual information we need to find something identifiable. While we might see something familiar in Spence?s prints, the abstract shapes ultimatelyresist easy definition and pull away from truly identifiable signs for objects in the visible world. | | Spence had had several solo painting exhibitions with the Edward Thorp Gallery and was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art?s "The Tradition of Geometric Abstraction in American Art 1930-1990" (1992) and as well as their 1975 Biennial. His art has been collected by major institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Carnegie Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art and The Baltimore Museum of Art. In 1994, Spence was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting and in 1987, he received an grant from the National Endowment for the Arts in Painting. |
