Robert Sagerman: Efflux

Brian Gross Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening of Efflux, an exhibition of new paintings by New York artist Robert Sagerman, on Saturday, September 7, 2019, from 4-6pm, with an artist talk at 4:30pm.  In his latest paintings, Sagerman expands on his previous monochromatic compositions by introducing secondary accent colors into his fields of accumulated daubs of paint.  Inspired by the idea of the “divine efflux” (in Hebrew, sheffa), or a flowing sustenance that supports creativity according to ancient Jewish mysticism, Sagerman’s swirling arrangements of paint reflect their inspiration through their compositional forms, while enticing the viewer with their seductive tones.  The exhibition will be on view through November 2, 2019. 

The act of counting strokes is a fundamental element in Robert Sagerman’s artistic process, the total number giving each painting its numerical title.  For Sagerman, the methodical application of counted strokes is a meditative act.  In his newest body of work, Sagerman couples this with the idea of being steeped within “…a state entailing an immersion in the phenomenology of experienced, synthesized color rendered material…”  In translating this into paint, Sagerman has introduced tonal dichotomies into the previously uniformly colored paintings.

In these paintings, Sagerman continues to develop his process-oriented field painting, through the addition of accent colors to the wave-like, single-toned compositions of his previous works.  The result of these pairings is a charged optical interplay of color within his surfaces, while simultaneously highlighting the visual movement of his strokes by bringing them into greater relief. 

Born in Bayside, New York in 1966, Robert Sagerman received his MFA in Painting and MA in Art History from the Pratt Institute in 1998; his MA in Religious Studies in 2000 from New York University; and his PhD in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University in 2008.  He is a respected scholar in early Jewish mysticism.  Sagerman has participated in numerous exhibitions in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Rome, and Munich, and his work can be found in the collections of the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; Karl Ernst Osthaus-Museum, Hagen Germany; and Museum Für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany. This is his sixth solo exhibition at Brian Gross Fine Art.