Spanierman Modern is pleased to announce the exhibition Frank Wimberley, featuring new works in the Abstract Expressionist tradition.  Based in New York and Sag Harbor, Wimberley is esteemed for his masterful abstractions, in which he translates his responses to material, texture, light, and color into powerful visual experiences. Using unusual manipulations of his materials, he creates works that demonstrate his belief in the unlimited possibilities of abstraction as a driving force. The exhibition is accompanied by a brochure with full-page color illustrations of several of the works in the show and an interview with the artist by the art historian and critic Phyllis Braff, who is writing a book on Wimberley.

The fourteen paintings on view demonstrate the larger scale and more assertive tonality that characterize Frank Wimberley’s current work.  Wimberley associates his new approach with his upcoming exhibition at Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, which will open in October 2012.  This exhibition was awarded to him, along with top honors, when he participated in the 72nd annual Artists’ Members Exhibition at the museum in 2010.  As Wimberley stated to Braff:  “I wanted my art to light up the museum space, and perhaps be a little bit over the edge.”  For Wimberley, color has certain references that he brings out in the range and diversity of his hues in these images.  Texture is also an expressive element of the works, which he integrates into his surface structures. 

After his favorite supplier of pigments went out of business, Frank Wimberley began mixing acrylics with a pumice product, increasing the thickness of his paint, which suggests risk in its concrete-like weight on a canvas.  He creates movement in his paintings through elements such as thick vertical columns of paint, the bold energy of his brushwork, and even in the shadows cast by his relief-like impasto.  Often the upper and lower portions of a canvas are in contrast with each other, demonstrating the presence of landscape and horizon ideas, and encouraging the viewer to journey within the works. 

Frank Wimberley’s purposeful method is demonstrated in the way that he articulates his surfaces, as in Bayou (2010), where he made a thick cross mark on the top of the paint, creating “a scar, perhaps so it would reflect a real situation.”  In this painting, he used yellow, a color he is “addicted to,” but he also wanted to bring in underlying darkness.  He stated:  “I think about giving life to my paintings, and over the years, I have taken inspiration from the world with which I have contact, from everything around me.  This includes all the visual and performing arts, sounds, and literature.”