The Red Show
Upper and Lower Gallery
May 21 - July 24, 2021
"If one says ‘Red’ - the name of the color - and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different.”
Josef Albers, Interaction of Color, 1963
The color red is associated with power, representing passion, energy, violence, desire, and courage. Due to scarcity of available pigments, the use of red historically denoted artworks of particular importance. The Red Show explores both artist and viewer's visceral reaction to the color red, through works of various media, styles, and techniques.
“It took a couple of years to get the feeling of red, and particularly cad red medium, which I happen to love. I like pastrami. I just like it. I couldn’t tell you why. I like cad red medium. It has a certain resonance to it.”
Philip Guston, 1966
"The pure red of which certain abstractionists speak does not exist, no matter how one shifts its physical contexts. Any red is rooted in blood, glass, wine, hunters' caps, and a thousand other concrete phenomena. Otherwise we would have no feeling toward red or its relations, and it would be useless as an artistic element."
Robert Motherwell
“This is something [Wolfgang Tillmans] has been exploring for over a decade: a purist approach to colour and form that acts as a counterpoint to his figurative pictures... From across the studio, with the sunlight falling on them from above, they look like the jewel-coloured windows of a white-walled church.”
Liz Jobey, The Guardian