Past Exhibitions: 2001

Donald Sultan: The Smoke Rings

August 18 - November 25, 2001
Apse Gallery, Works on Paper Gallery, and Museum Living Room

Donald Sultan
Smoke Rings Oct. 24, 1997, 1997
tar, spackle on tile over masonite
courtesy of Baldwin Gallery

New York artist Donald Sultan's series of Smoke Ring canvases, large-scale Iris prints, and small-scale photographs will be on display in three of the Museum's galleries. Of particular note will be the installation specifically conceived for the Museum's dramatic Apse: elegant, meditative, large-scale tar paintings--languid, spiraling curls of smoke that are as much about a graphic gesture of white on black as they are about a state of mind. Sultan's Smoke Ring paintings are at once mysterious and evocative, both suggestive and hyperrealistic, related to the artist's long-standing interest in the still-life tradition and attention to the beauty to be found in the everyday and commonplace details that surround us.

The exhibition runs throughout the fall months and will be accompanied by a gallery guide pairing Sultan's paintings and photographs with a moody, evocative verse essay by the distinguished writer Max Blagg.

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