** Update

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the gallery closed the show early. For information, please connect with me through my contact page or the gallery via email.

When I was introduced to Janssen Art Space in Palm Springs, in the summer of 2019, I saw a jewel of a gallery, a beautiful light box housed in a circa-1960s Donald Wexler-designed building. It spoke to me on many levels - the abstract art being shown, the space, and the town itself. Later Steven Janssen, the gallerist/artist, visited my Los Angeles studio to select photographic abstractions in the spirit of modernism for the A Modern High group exhibit.

In Palm Springs, modernism is closely associated with the design and innovations of mid-century architecture and each year in February, during eleven days of Modernism Week, thousands of visitors pour in for tours and lectures that explore and laud mid-century modernist architecture. The exhibit opened during this activity.

Being in Palm Springs brought back an early childhood memory of a surreal event. In the modernist-era of the 1950s and 1960s, my fashionable parents often vacationed there with friends from Los Angeles. And as I explained in an interview with Palm Springs Life magazine, one of those visits left an indelible impression and fascination with illumination that was influential in my photography career.

I created the work in the exhibit before I knew it would be shown in Palm Springs. As non-objective explorations of light, colors, shapes and symbols, my work is often without real-world references in their titles but sometimes end up reflecting something I feel from the piece or because a theme emerges. Eight of the nine works in A Modern High were titled from contemplation of how cities are planned, governed and experienced.

The title in the exhibit most synonymous with Palm Springs is Sunset on Frey’s Rocks (shown below). In 1964, after five years studying the movement of the sun on the mountain, architect Albert Frey sited Frey House II seamlessly into the rocks and lived there until his death in 1998. Gifted to the Palm Springs Art Museum, it is located, coincidentally, at the end of Tahquitz Canyon Way, just a few blocks from the Janssen gallery. Born in Switzerland, Frey moved to Paris to work with architect Le Corbusier on the Villa Savoye, which had enormous influence on international modernism. After moving to the U.S., he contributed designs for the Museum of Modern Art in New York from 1937-1939 then settled permanently in Palm Springs. As a founder of desert Modernism, he had a profound influence on the city’s architecture, often blending buildings into the natural environment.

Another selected work, Reflections in Case Study (shown above) is a reference to mid-century modern glass houses built as inexpensive and efficient prototypes, sponsored by Arts & Architecture magazine from 1945-1966. Utopia (shown below) is a double-entendre nod to modernism and a “utopian” city, with greenways and swimming areas, not unlike Palm Springs, which had the highest per capita pool rate in the United States by 1965. Backyard swimming pools for the wealthy were now middle class.

Many subjects, such as art, architecture, furniture design, and music, are under the umbrella of “modernism” but its basic principles relate to a search for new forms of artistic expression and rejection of past traditions, sometimes with a “utopian” vision of life and society. In technical terms, it is experimentation and innovation with shapes, forms, layers, colors, lines and illusion; and attention to the materials, processes or techniques used in a new “modern” world. It began about the time that photography was discovered in the late 1800s when the camera could be used to more realistically portray real-world scenes and people, opening up new avenues for painters. Most sources say the movement reached its peak in the 1960s and ended in the 1970s.

Philosophically and technically, I invoke principles of modernism by embracing a new form of abstraction using innovative techniques. Aesthetically, art critic Peter Frank has said some of my work “would have looked perfect in Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century gallery,” which held exhibitions with American abstract painters Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Paul Klee, Hans Hofman, Adolph Gottlieb, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollack, Lee Krasner, and Georgia O’Keefe, who at the time were lesser known or had never had exhibitions.

Today, post-Modernism or “contemporary” art doesn’t have a movement or style. It is held together as a definition mainly as “art created by living artists.” Although generally rooted in various aesthetic styles and ideals of modernism, contemporary art is all over the map with a wide array of concepts, themes, and subject matter. It includes abstract, street, pop, performance, conceptual, new media, and installation created by painting, sculpture, photography, video, and other methods. Artists today may ask the viewer to question the definition of art or what it should look like, and attempt to redefine art itself. Audiences are asked to open up their minds.

I create contemporary art with a commitment to experimentation. I’m breaking with tradition and questioning established boundaries in photography. In presenting photographs that appear to be abstract paintings I’m challenging perceptions of what photography should be, and what abstract art can be. This is especially evident in A Modern High, as my work is shown next to artists who have applied paint to canvas.

The exhibit runs from February 14 - March 15, 2020. Visit Janssen Artspace at 255 E. Tahquitz Canyon Way, Palm Springs, California. www.stevenjanssen.com