CURRENT NEWS

BEN WOOLFITT
Blue Passage

November 29 to December 22, 2023
Artist Reception: Thursday, November 30, from 6:00 to 8:00 PM
 
David Richard Gallery
508 West 26 ST, Suite 9F
Chelsea, New York City

David Richard Gallery is pleased to present Blue Passage, a solo exhibition and debut of new paintings and drawings by artist Ben Woolfitt in his first presentation with the gallery. Always exploring non-objective abstraction and inspired by Color Field painting, Woolfitt’s process-driven paintings begin and end with surface and color. These newest works start with waves and swaths of gesso that provide the first step in his process. Applying pigment in layers with each mark and gesture in response to the prior additions, the colors and imagery organically evolve filling the canvas and running off the edges in every direction. The variety of media, including acrylic paint, dry pigment, metallic leaf, and graphite and the canvas filling, all over painting approach makes the work dynamic, full of intrigue with the color and imagery extending beyond the canvas edges. Depending upon the range of palettes, from black and white, to blue, black and white, or black and gold, with occasional additions of green or red, each painting having sprays of colors in the grounds or moving toward the surface with clusters of marks evokes astral skies, the cosmos, or nautical vegetation and creatures deep in the sea.  

The presentation will also include a selection of new drawings taken from Woolfitt’s daily practice in his New York, East Village studio. Each drawing is a unique creation, not a prelude to nor a study for any particular painting. Aesthetically, very much related to the paintings, each rendering is created using the technique of ‘frottage’ that captures the impressions of screens, wire mesh, or crumpled materials behind the drawing paper and provides the surface texture and imagery after rubbing the surfaces with graphite, dry pigment, and silver leaf. However, while the media may be common between the canvas versus paper supports, the imagery develops on the paper with a vision or intentionality in mind that explores fissures and eruptions, horizon lines, repetition of forms, and large passages of color. Woolfitt’s drawings and numerous drawing books that record decades of his visual explorations were prominently featured in his recent solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto from July 2021 through March 2022. 

A new book with an essay by Donald Kuspit will follow the exhibition. Kuspit has written two other books extensively investigating and discussing Woolfitt’s studio practice spanning five decades of his paintings and drawings.

 

BEN WOOLFITT NOW REPRESENTED BY THE DAVID RICHARD GALLERIES IN CHELSEA, NYC

Ben Woolfitt is honoured that his work will be showcased at the prestigious @davidrichardgalleries1 in Chelsea, NYC. The grand opening will take place in November 2023, where you can experience a collection of his paintings, drawings and cherished sketchbooks. A second show of Ben’s early paintings will take place in the fall of 2025.

Stay tuned for more details!



PAST NEWS

BEN WOOLFITT: RHYTHMS AND SERIES at the AGO until March 13, 2022

Located on the first floor in galleries 140-141.

AGO PRESENTS THE PSYCHOLOGICALLY CHARGED DRAWINGS OF TORONTO ARTIST BEN WOOLFITT

Dec.10, 2020 - Toronto- and New York- based artist Ben Woolfitt begins each day by drawing. Using graphite and silver or metal leaf, Woolfitt pours his emotions onto the pages of his drawing books. Best known for his large-scale abstract paintings, it is on paper that Woolfitt’s unique language of signs and symbols comes to life.  

Opening January 23, 2021, at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO)

BW_set2_17.jpg


Ben Woolfitt: Rhythms and Series is an exhibition of 37 works on paper, four drawing books and one painting. Assembled for the first time, these works highlight Woolfitt’s unique process and his skills at frottage, a technique of creating an image by taking a rubbing from an uneven surface. Working with various found objects, including pieces of bamboo, wire grates and fragments of window screen, over the past two decades Woolfitt has generated 15 distinct but overlapping series of drawings that capture his raw feelings and responses to events both personal and global, including the outbreak of COVID-19.

Inspired by the works of Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, and Antoni Tapiès, Woolfitt began drawing in earnest in the late 1970s. Over the years, these drawings have evolved into intimate, diaristic chronicles, filling the pages of his custom-made drawing books. Signed and dated, Woolfitt draws on the pages of the books in no specific order, allowing his sensations to exist independently.

“One of the reasons I like to work early in the morning is because the range of emotions are very available to me,” says Woolfitt. “Once you go through the day and people have banged on your door enough times, it is very hard to return to these emotions.”

Organized by the AGO and co-curated by Kenneth Brummel, Associate Curator of Modern Art, and Alexa Greist, Associate Curator and R. Fraser Elliott Chair of Prints and Drawings, Ben Woolfitt: Rhythms and Series is on view in the Nicholas Fodor Gallery and Gallery 141 on Level 1 until July 18, 2021.  

“Through ritualistic and repeated acts of creative production, Woolfittenables his unconscious drives to imbue his richly textured drawings with feeling and energy,” says Brummel. “Personal loss, deaths of loved ones, current events – all of this is translated onto the page by Woolfitt,” Greist adds. “In a series like Bursts, the action, feeling and density of those forms make them swell and feel much bigger than they are, much as emotions can come back and overpower us.” 

Accompanying the exhibition is a 165-page hardcover catalogue co-published by the AGO and Goose Lane Editions. A richly illustrated volume, Ben Woolfitt: Rhythms and Series features an interview with the artist as well as a comprehensive exhibition history and bibliography. The catalogue will be available for sale in shopAGO for $40.

Ben Woolfitt: Rhythms & Series is free for AGO Members, AGO Annual Pass holders and visitors aged 25 and under. For more information, and to book timed-entry tickets, visit www.ago.ca.

VIEW EXHIBITION OVERVIEW HERE

Think Beyond the Louvre: Four museums to put on your bucket List.

January 16, 2020 - Ben Woolfitt has been an essential part of the Toronto art scene since the 1970s. Now, he’s kicking off 2021 with “Ben Woolfitt: Rhythms and Series,” a major solo show of abstract drawings at the AGO — and itching to get back out into the world to visit some of his favourite art collections. Until that day comes, we asked him to share his top art pilgrimages.