Closing Reception Thursday 11 February 2010, 5 to 8 pm

F.o.R. # 14, 2009, 24″ x 20″
Latex, acrylic, chalk, powdered graphite, oil, wax on canvas.
Photo: Steve Paszt

Joseph Winterhalter’s exhibit “Painting/Paperwork” could easily be called “Architecture/Poetry”; words that filled my mind as I viewed Winterhalter’s large scale canvases and ‘Text Works’. Putting industrial materials to work ,latex, vinyl, and enamel paint, atop soft subtle substrates canvas and Arches paper Winterhalter’s work speaks of hard edged architecture and the romance of imperfection.

His huge canvases of painted bricks and areas of stained color and texture, brilliantly bring the Color Field Movement of the 50’s and 60’s that included artists like Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland into the the 21st Century.

Like the Color Field painter’s Winterhalter depends on emphasizing the formal elements of modern painting, the flat surface, the fundamental unmodulated areas of color, and the removal of gesture.

Little surprises among the meticulously painted brick ‘walls’ call out; a soft curve here or a distressed surface there, keep the eye and mind moving. Subtle drips, muted colors carry the viewer into soft poetic spaces, finally arriving at ‘Text Works’; we can read actual prose like the following;

“Two people meet on the street and rather than passing with eyes averted, they pause-their feet forced down to the reground of inscrutable, fundamental experience-to engage, unrelenting, in a confrontation between their very souls, this

F.o.R #2, 2009, 22″ x 30″
Gesso, powdered graphite, oil, wax on Arches paper.
Photo: Steve Paszt

setting free those dormant, brave and reckless gods within..for it is only now, that consequences be damned, that we have finally met”.

Go and meet Winterhalter’s painting and paperwork, let yourself be surprised, move into the softness, past the walls, open your heart; hey, Valentine’s Day is coming, after all.

Joseph Winterhalter (Cincinnati OH) studied graphic design and fine art at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art & Planning, before earning his B.F.A. in Painting from Ohio University in 1991. In 1993, he attended the graduate program in painting and drawing at the Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. Winterhalter’s paintings, drawings and live performances have been featured in both solo and group exhibitions at Cincinnati venues. He has had exhibitions throughout the United States, and his work is in numerous private collections.