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Roland Reiss
Floral Paintings and Miniatures

December 11, 2014 - January 17, 2015
Opening Reception: Thursday, December 11th, 6:00pm - 8:00 pm


DIANE ROSENSTEIN is pleased to announce Roland Reiss: Floral Paintings and Miniatures, a solo exhibition of recent paintings (2008-2014) and important early sculpture (1977-1992). Floral Paintings and Miniatures opens Thursday, December 11th, 2014, with a reception for the artist from 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm. This is Mr. Reiss' first exhibition with the gallery.
 
Inspired by Edouard Manet's late series of flower paintings, Roland Reiss began his new "floral paintings" in 2008 as a meditation on the impact of color on our consciousness. Here, Reiss deploys roses, lilies, and sunflowers as color delivery devices; they float in large-scale compositions layered with collaged stencils and cutouts that reference cityscapes, modernist painting, and forms found in his early sculptural tableaus.  The artist recently described this major body of work as an effort to "put everything I have learned about painting into a painting." This exhibition will include a selection of fifteen paintings from the past six years.

Mr. Reiss will also show five important "Miniatures" from his personal archive, including  tableaus from The Dancing Lessons (1977), Gravity Observations (1982), and F/X (1991).  These boxed Miniatures are a major legacy of the Southern California conceptual and vanguard art scene; and recently were also the focus of the solo exhibition, Roland Reiss: Personal Politics: Sculpture from the 1970s and 1980s, at the Pasadena Museum of California Art (2011-2012).  Currently, Mr. Reiss's fifty-year career is the subject of a survey curated by Mike McGee at the Begovich Gallery (CSU, Fullerton). In his essay for the catalogue, OCMA Chief Curator Dan Cameron states that  "until Reiss' tableaus, nobody in the American art world had attempted to employ the visual language of cinematic framing to such powerful effect, and, despite the ubiquitous presence of the language of movie-making in the art of the twenty-first century, it is unlikely that anyone... will be able to surpass his psychologically and culturally challenging achievement."


Roland Reiss (USA, b. 1929) is widely recognized for his Miniatures, but he is first and foremost a painter. He was included in exhibitions in the early 1960s at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the San Francisco Museum of Art; the 1975 Whitney Biennial and dOCUMENTA 7 (1982). LACMA included Mr. Reiss in Avant Garde in the '80s (1987).  He has received survey exhibitions from the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art (2011-2012) and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (1991). Reiss has continuously received solo and group exhibitions throughout his career, at institutions including the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY (Purchase, NY), Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA), Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA), San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA), The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO).  His paintings and sculpture are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), among others. Roland Reiss was the Chairman of the Art Department at Claremont Graduate University from 1971- 2000; he has also received four National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowships for both painting and sculpture. Roland Reiss lives and works in Los Angeles.

Roland Reiss: Floral Paintings and Miniatures will be on view until January 17th, 2015.


DIANE ROSENSTEIN
831 North Highland Avenue
Los Angeles, California 90038
Tuesday - Saturday 10am - 6pm
tel: 323.462.2790
www.dianerosenstein.com