March 22 – April 22

Ruth Pastine, Warm-Light Yellow-Orange, Interplay Series, 2012, pastel on paper, 14 x 14 inches, matted and framed 24 x 24 inches square

Ruth Pastine, Warm-Light Yellow-Orange, Interplay Series, 2012, pastel on paper, 14 x 14 inches, matted and framed 24 x 24 inches square


[gdl_gallery title=”ruth-install” width=”200″ height=”200″]

Porch Gallery Ojai presents Ruth Pastine: BroadBands. Like a composer who orchestrates twelve notes to create musical compositions, Pastine employs three complementary color systems to create artworks that are at once minimal yet complex transcending the typical boundaries of her palette. Pastine’s paintings move beyond the mere study of color, they are models of contradiction that highlight the dialog between the finite vs. infinite, materiality of surface and immateriality of space and light, and the visceral vs. the methodological. As Peter Frank wrote in his essay for Fabrik Magazine, her works “propose transcendence through pure color.”

Breaking from the seamless transitions in her former bodies of work, Pastine’s latest paintings and works on paper incorporate noticeable tonal shifts through the admixture and contrast of hues and values. By disrupting the continuum of colors, she allows marked conversions from hue to hue to emerge. The result is a banding that creates a color-vibration that emanates from the canvas. Pastine generates motion that leads to emotion and through minimalism she creates expressionism.

Ruth Pastine received her B.F.A. from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, New York City, and upon graduating was awarded an independent residency grant to the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. She received her M.F.A. from Hunter College of the City University of New York. In 2009, Ruth Pastine began site-specific work with a public commission entitled Limitless, composed of two series of large-scale paintings installed in the adjoining lobbies of Brookfield Properties Ernst & Young Plaza, in downtown Los Angeles. She has exhibited widely in the United States and Japan. In 2014, Ruth Pastine had her first museum survey exhibition entitled: Attraction: 1993-2013 at MOAH Museum of Art and History Lancaster, CA with exhibition catalog essays by Donald Kuspit and Peter Frank. In 2015, she opened Present Tense: Paintings and Pastel Works on Paper 2010-2015 at the CAM Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA. Pastine’s works are included in numerous private and public collections, including the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; SFMOMA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; MCASD Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles; MOAH Museum of Art and History Lancaster, CA; Brookfield Properties, Ernst & Young Plaza, Los Angeles; AXA Art, Cologne, Germany; Qualcomm, San Diego; CIM Group Headquarters, Los Angeles, among others. Ruth Pastine lives and works in Southern California.