Paul Henry Ramirez
Elevatious Transcendsualistic
Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY
November 2, 2002 — January 5, 2003
A new work by New York City painter Paul Henry Ramirez, described by Artforum magazine as “a sensual formalist and a formal sensualist,” is on view at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, in an exhibition entitled Elevatious Transcendsualistic.
In this second of the Tang’s series of “Openers” —exhibitions that showcase upcoming artists and new works—14 Ramirez paintings, each measuring eight feet by two feet, are on display in the museum’s atrium. The candy-colored, loopy paintings feature biomorphic shapes ranging from bulbs to tendrils, which The New York Times has described as “complex, naughty, and elegantly refined.”
Using the paintings as his starting point, Paul Henry Ramirez creates a site-specific installation that begins with the large canvases and then escape onto the adjoining walls, in the form of blocks of solid color the artist paints directly onto the museum’s surfaces. The dynamic style exemplifies Ramirez’s approach to architectural space as an empty canvas into which to extend his playfully organic images.
Paul Henry Ramirez grew up in El Paso, Texas, and attended the University of Texas at El Paso and Raritan Valley College in New Jersey. His work has been exhibited in numerous solo shows and in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Bronx Museum, the Austin Museum of Art, the Bard Center for Curatorial Studies, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, and the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris in midtown Manhattan.
About his work, Paul Henry Ramirez has said that “Juicy, swirling paint suggests the internal and external rhythm of the body. I use this visual vocabulary of sensual images to highlight the comedy of our bodily functions….[and to] simultaneously evoke a childish innocence and a sexual provocativeness.”
Elevatious Transcendsualistic was organized by Ian Berry, curator of the Tang Museum, in collaboration with the artist.
The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
815 North Broadway, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
