In the Round

“The circle is the synthesis of the greatest oppositions. It combines the concentric and the eccentric in a single form, and in equilibrium. Of the three primary forms, it points most clearly to the fourth dimension.”

- Wassily Kandinsky

Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present a selection of historical and contemporary works by Karl Benjamin, Matsumi Kanemitsu, Jerome Kirk, Mark Leonard, Helen Lundeberg, Harrison McIntosh, and John Stephan. In this group of paintings and sculptures, these artists explore color, movement, and energy in the language of circular forms. Recursive and self-contained yet infinite and universal, each work explores the boundaries and possibilities of this essential shape.

Benjamin’s vibrant paintings pulse with bright rings and arcs, sliced apart and spliced together in repeating patterns that shift and dance across the canvas. Kanemitsu’s Opening evokes the fluidity, discipline, and expressiveness of a Zen Buddhist ensō drawing, realizing the creation of a circle as a meditative act. Lundeberg analyzes the gravitational power of celestial bodies, dissecting planetary objects into opalescent and candy-colored strata. Stephan strains the limits of a square canvas against the radial force of a massive, moonlike orb. Mark Leonard’s lustrous, meticulously structured works are informed by his long career as a paintings conservator; his Still Life series is inspired by the sumptuous volumes of grape clusters in a 17thCentury Dutch oil painting he painstakingly restored.

McIntosh’s elegant, minimalist forms suggest a snapshot of an object motion: a blue and white disc frozen in the act of rolling down a steel ramp, a stoneware globe sunk partway below a chrome horizon. In Kirk’s painstakingly engineered kinetic sculptures, motion becomes the subject matter, with vermillion crescents and multicolored acrylic rings gliding noiselessly past each other in a mesmerizing cosmic dance.