Howard Scott Gallery is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of the New York-based artist Rick Klauber.

In this micro-retrospective of Rick Klauber’s work on paper from 1994-2000, we see him gradually returning to a still, quiet place in the eye of the storm, after working in the big and bold abstraction of the nineteen-eighties. It is as if he invokes his roots in Abstract Expressionism to meditate upon the simplest elements of its grammar, employing drips, color fields and straight lines to create works that also draw upon Minimalism and Process art. While at the same time continuing his work on larger canvasses, Klauber reached a moment of reduction and reflectiveness, as happens with many artists with long careers, almost a “palette cleansing,” as he challenged himself to return to and build upon the formal elements of his process.

The “Drop Paintings”, from ‘94 to ‘98, used the simplest of building blocks - drops of paint and gravity - to build a surface that still reads as complex and galactic or, as Tom Breidenbach wrote in an essay in Artforum, (November, 1998), like microbial efflorescences that, “One almost suspects are growing.” In the “Vista Drawings” from 1998- 2000, he rubbed pulverized pastel into the paper to create moody, variegated fields that recall mist, smoke and night. In the larger geometric pastels from the same period, he used strips of color to draw with, using tape and empty space to define them. For the line drawings that followed, which read as simultaneously Minimal and Op, Klauber ransacked his studio for every stray pencil and china marker, using, likewise, an old, misshapen ruler.

In all these works there is something playful, leaving room for the intuition or “feel” of a moment, while at the same time hewing closely to the potential of his materials. Klauber seems to be asking what the medium obviates and where he begins as an artist. It is within this charged space that Klauber consistently defines himself.

Cassandra Neyenesch
Press Release for "Works on Paper 1994 - 2000", Howard Scott Gallery, 2016