Sean Scully 'PAN' Review - The Brooklyn Rail
1 June 2019
While Scully is not “conceptual” in the sense of either Sol LeWitt or Robert Ryman—two artists he greatly admires, who were formerly shown at Lisson—the Irish-born painter began developing a grid-like approach to painting prior to the early 1970s when he first arrived in New York. Later that decade, his paintings turned dark gray with evenly spaced horizontal lines that would eventually lead to a more painterly style involving linear blocks of color, placed horizontally and vertically in the picture plane.
PAN is a two-gallery exhibition that clearly emphasizes the diversity of Scully’s achievement over the course of his career. In the Gallery’s 24th Street location, we are presented with a terse grouping of the various directions in abstract painting he has pursued since the early 1980s yet, the works included here, including the various Landlines, were all painted within the past year and a half. As a result, the quality of these works varies from the stylistic sources from which they are drawn. To know this depends on having seen paintings from earlier time periods either in museum collections or in exhibitions shown in past years throughout Europe and the United States (and more recently in Beijing).
Sean Scully PAN continues at both of Lisson Gallery's New York spaces through 8 June, 2019.
Image: Installation view - Sean Scully PAN at Lisson Gallery, 504 W 24th Street, New York.
