Gary Stephan

Stephan studied industrial design at Parsons School of Design and at Pratt Institute. In 1965, he moved to San Francisco and received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1967.{{Cite web | url=http://www.artnet.com/artists/gary-stephan/biography |title = Gary Stephan Biography – Gary Stephan on artnet}}

After returning to New York, he was a studio assistant to Jasper Johns until he started showing with the David Whitney Gallery in 1970. This and the Whitney Biennial Exhibitions of 1971 and 1973 were followed by sufficient shows and reviews to prompt Roberta Smith in the New York Times to refer to his work as “among the most closely watched developments of the early ’70s.”{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/16/arts/design/16high.html|title=High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975 - Art - Review|last=Smith|first=Roberta|date=2007-02-16|newspaper=The New York Times|issn=0362-4331|access-date=2016-05-09}}

Exhibiting since the late 1960s, Stephan creates Postmodern art in the form of idiosyncraticly abstract paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, photography and video art.

File: Gary_Stephan_Untitled_2019_tape_on_paper_7_in_x_7_in.jpgStephan builds paintings, abstract in form but pictorial in nature, with a few simple visual tools and colors, which he then uses to undermine a coherent view.{{cite web|url= https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/gary-stephan-61733//|title=Gary Stephan|date=2 June 2014|website=artnews.com|accessdate=26 April 2020}} Stephan surrounds his marks with shaped areas of negative space that destabilize figure/ground relationships.{{cite web|url= https://www.painters-table.com/link/brooklyn-rail/gary-stephan-interview|title= Gary Stephan: Interview |date=6 October 2012|website=painters-table.com|accessdate=26 April 2020}} A color that is used as ground might come to the surface as a positive form.{{cite web|url= https://brooklynrail.org/2012/09/art/gary-stephan-with-phong-bui|title= Gary Stephan with Phong Bui|date=6 September 2012|website=brooklynrail.com|accessdate=26 April 2020}} He also uses discontinuous areas of similar color that visually unite to create the impression of a singular shape.{{cite web|url= https://hyperallergic.com/397698/beer-with-a-painter-suzanne-joelson-and-gary-stephan/|title= Beer with a Painter: Suzanne Joelson and Gary Stephan|date=26 August 2017|website=hyperallergic.com|accessdate=26 April 2020}}

Part of the power of Stephan’s paintings and drawings comes from their engagement with the architecture of their exhibition spaces in ways that mirror their formal structure.{{cite web|url= https://bombmagazine.org/articles/gary-stephan/|title=Gary Stephan|date=1 October 1988|website=bombmagazine.org|accessdate=26 April 2020}} Because of their color and facture, some of Stephan’s paintings may seem austere, but merely apprehending their complex formal structure does not settle their meanings. Stephan creates ambiguities of form that summon feelings that are not easily resolved.{{cite web|url= https://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2016/04/gary-stephan-logic-of-rotation.html|title=Catalogue essay: Raphael Rubinstein on Gary Stephan|date=4 April 2016|website=twocoatsofpaint.com|accessdate=26 April 2020}}

As an abstract painter, Stephan evades the obvious seductive charms that painting offers. He is a rigorous formalist painter. Part of the strength of Stephan’s work is the way is engages our imagination through metaphor-eliciting ambiguities. All the feelings connected with these various interpretations coexist in the emotional resonance of his paintings.{{cite web|url= https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/gary-stephan-61733//|title=Gary Stephan|date=2 June 2014|website=artnews.com|accessdate=28 April 2020}}

His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Drawing Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Whitney Museum.

Stephan has had solo shows in New York at Susan Inglett Gallery, Bykert Gallery, Mary Boone Gallery, Hirschl and Adler, and Marlborough Gallery; in Los Angeles at Margo Leavin Gallery and Daniel Weinberg Gallery.

He had a retrospective exhibition at the Kienzle Art Foundation in Berlin from 13 September 2017 to 13 January 2018.{{Cite web |url=http://kienzleartfoundation.de/show-21-gary-stephan/ |title=HOW THINGS HAPPEN: Gary Stephan in der Kienzle Art Foundation |access-date=2017-09-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170906034830/http://kienzleartfoundation.de/show-21-gary-stephan/ |archive-date=2017-09-06 |url-status=dead }}

• American Academy of Arts and Letters
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship
• National Endowment for the Arts
• The New York Arts Foundation

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
• Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
• San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
• Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC{{Cite web | url=http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=35117 |title = Garden Path | Smithsonian American Art Museum}}
• Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY
• Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York, NY
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
• Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY{{Cite web | url=http://collection.whitney.org/object/7836 |title = Gary Stephan | Study for Eating Light}}
• Kunst Museum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland

• Gary Stephan: Book of Nine, nine engravings after drawings with nine homographs. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1983
• Peter Schjeldahl: Gary Stephan, Same Body Different Day. West Stockbridge MA, 1999

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• [http://garystephanstudio.com/pages/index.php Artist’s website]

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Category:American modern painters

Category:Living people

Category:1942 births

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:21st-century American painters

Category:Parsons School of Design alumni

Category:San Francisco Art Institute alumni