Alex Katz is the preeminent painter of modern life. For over sixty years, he has defined the American visual vocabulary, and like all great painters, his work is both beyond and rooted in time. For some, their art remains alive and for others it is unreachably stuck in the past. For Katz, his work is timeless, and the theme is time itself.
For his third exhibition at Gladstone, Katz has peered into his past to revisit works from throughout his oeuvre. These new paintings re-present cropped copies of earlier iconic portraits from 1957 to 2008 of the artist’s wife Ada. In works such as Ada 8, which is a cropped version of the 1989 work Ada in Red, the accessories and adornments have fallen away, leaving the stark visage of the human face, floating outside of time and context. By reworking portraits from his past, Katz has in turn mirrored the present moment. Employing a bright palette, graphic sensibility, and cinematic framing of each composition, the works on view highlight the artist’s resilience and originality.