Gary Lang

Press Release

Brian Gross Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Gary Lang: Centers on Thursday, November 11, 2021, from 5:30–7:30pm, with an artist talk at 6pm. Centers marks BGFA’s reintroduction of this important California painter’s work to Bay Area audiences. Known for his highly structured formal investigations of line and color, Gary Lang’s 40 year exploration of pictorial space through abstraction has included this group of highly energized circle, square, and diamond shaped paintings. Replete with rich, vibrant tones, Lang masterfully uses bands of color in each painting to create a visual tension that both pulls the eye to the centers of his compositions, and simultaneously pushes the viewer back. The exhibition will be on view through January 8, 2022.

On view will be one of Gary Lang’s signature painted circles, BLUELIGHTSEVEN, from 2015–2021. Also featured will be three new digitally printed circles on canvas, as well as a group of recent concentric square paintings and a pair of diamond shaped works on panel. Finely crafted of dazzling, optically charged hues, Lang’s dynamic color choices are intuitive rather than formulaic. Experientially driven, Lang describes his work as “ecstatic meditations”.

Gary Lang is an internationally exhibited artist, whose work has been featured in over 70 solo exhibitions in the United States, Europe and Japan. Born in Los Angeles, Lang received his BFA from the Chouinard Institute in 1970 and his MFA from Yale in 1975. In the 1970s he lived in Barcelona on a Fulbright/Hayes Travel Grant, and later lived and worked in New York and Los Angeles before settling in Ojai, CA. Lang has also been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, and is a two time recipient of grants from The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.

Lang’s works can be found in numerous private, corporate, and public collections worldwide, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Detroit Institute of Art, MI; Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT; Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, UT; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Carnegie Art Museum, Oxnard, CA; Museum of Art & History, Lancaster, CA; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; Riverside Museum of Art, Riverside, CA; The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, CA; Portland Museum of Art, ME; Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Beverly Hills, CA; Kunstmuseum Den Haag, The Hague, Netherlands; and the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers, France, among others. This is Gary Lang’s sixth solo exhibition with Brian Gross Fine Art.