Old Square/New Square

The Cincinnati Arts Association’s Alice F. and Harris K. Weston Art Gallery in the Aronoff Center for the Arts announces Old Square/New Square, a new series of colorful, bold and dynamic abstract paintings by acclaimed Cincinnati artist Stewart Goldman. With themes abstracted from the physical landscape, Old Square/New Square also features a separate but parallel investigation of taped wall drawings examining political realms.

Inspired by the Italian countryside during a sabbatical from the Art Academy of Cincinnati in 1985, Stewart Goldman began a series of watercolor studies that later served as the foundation for a monumental 30 foot wide mural painting commissioned by Cincinnati Bell in 1990. From this commission, a new series of paintings evolved that utilized a square module within a grid format to influence decisions regarding color, shape and interval within abstract interpretations of landscape. Old Square/New Square features the latest evolution of this series with paintings ranging in scale from four to six foot square that utilize brilliant color in a reductive vocabulary evoking exuberant energy and emotion.

A parallel investigation of wall drawings by Goldman employs a similar reductive method to explore political and social issues. In 2000, as an exhibition for the Warsaw Project Space in Cincinnati, the artist created a new series of linear wall drawings utilizing a variety of colored electrical tape applied directly to the wall. This series initially focused on architectural images of bridges and guard towers associated with the Holocaust, which Goldman investigated through a powerful series of paintings and etchings completed during the 1980s and ’90s. As part of his exhibition at the Weston Art Gallery, he will create a new series of large-scale maps on the wall with paint and electrical tape depicting the metropolitan areas of Washington, D.C.; New Orleans, LA; and Baghdad, Iraq—three seemingly unrelated geographic areas—linked nonetheless by political and social turmoil that continues to dominate current media coverage. 

Stewart Goldman has lived and worked in Cincinnati since 1968 where he is well regarded as a committed artist, renowned art educator and arts advocate. In a dedicated career spanning more than forty years, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions including such commercial exhibition venues as the Carl Solway Gallery, Toni Birckhead Gallery, Linda Schwartz Gallery, Michael Solway Gallery, and most recently, Cincinnati Art Galleries. A retrospective of his work was presented at the University of Cincinnati’s former downtown exhibition venue, The Machine Shop Gallery in 1993, and a major solo exhibition of his paintings was featured at Miami University Art Museum in 1994. He has been the recipient of three Ohio Arts Council grants in support of exhibitions he organized in Munich, Germany and Kharkiv, Ukraine. In addition, he has been awarded individual artist grants from the City of Cincinnati and Summerfair. In 1988 he was recognized as Outstanding Individual Artist from the Cincinnati Post-Corbett Awards. In 2001, after 33 years of service, Goldman retired from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He currently maintains a studio in Camp Washington where he continues to pursue his artwork.

www.stewartgoldman.com

See and hear more about Stewart at: www.artistsonart.org

Gallery Talk Series: Tue., April 18, 7 p.m.

Families Create! Education Workshop: Sat., June 10, 10 a.m. - noon