McKenzie Fine Art: Don Voisine Exhibition 2019

55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467 fax 212 989 5642

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	Don Voisine May 3 - June 9, 2019
	Don Voisine creates hard-edged, geometric abstract paintings, predominately in oil on wood panels. In his compositions, rectilinear planes cross and overlap, or lie adjacent to each other. They are tautly painted, with smooth surfaces in matte and glossy tones of black, ultramarine blue, and occasionally, reds and creams. The forms are generally set against lighter fields of color or subtly contrasting darker fields. They are flanked at the top and bottom or the sides by equal-sized bands of contrasting color. Voisine achieves subtle variations in his blacks through the use of undercolors and glazes, and he has expanded his investigation of ultramarine and indigo blue. Overall, his use of color is noticeably brighter and more varied in this exhibition, especially in the intensity and saturation of colors in the flanking bands – vibrant reds, bright yellows, rich purples, warmly-tinged whites and creams – which frame the interior space of the compositions. The bands are frequently accentuated by even narrower lines of color, imparting an optical charge as they zip across or up and down. Voisine’s geometric forms occupy an architectonic, sculptural space, sometimes shallow, sometimes deep and expansive. He creates movement in the work using contrasting finishes, which give the appearance that forms are moving forward or receding. The play of light on expanses of directional brushwork creates volume, weight, and depth. Overlapping rectangular shapes often appear to tilt or swing in space, creating tension by disrupting the axis of the composition. While many of the shapes in his paintings are set in symmetrical arrangements, asymmetry often comes into play in both the shape of the forms themselves, as well as in the way they rest on their grounds. Voisine notes that his paintings “strive for diversity within formal rigor, a focused meditative experience though active compositions.” Employing his carefully reductive visual language and format, Voisine has created a remarkable range of pictorial investigation into shape, color and space. His refined paintings feel monumental, even dramatic, no matter their scale, and are always lively.