JAMES HOWELL — RESOLUTION AND INDEPENDENCE
April 10 - July 10, 2022
Josef Albers – Museum Quadrat
Anni-Albers-Platz 1
46236 Bottrop, Germany
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m
Sundays: 10 a.m. – 5 p.m
//quadrat.bottrop.de
Opening Reception: Sunday, April 10, 2022. 11 a.m. to 2 p.m
Please join us for James Howell – Resolution and Independence opens at the Josef Albers – Museum Quadrat, Bottrop, from Sunday, April 10, 2022.
Curated by the Director of the Josef Albers Museum, Dr. Heinz Liesbrock, the exhibition Resolution and Independence, (also the title of the moving poem by William Wordsworth conveying a wide range of emotions experienced in the vast landscape of the moor), points toward the sensual clarity and the singular stillness of James Howell's artistic practice. And just as the positivism of nature is a prominent theme in Wordsworth’s poetry, so it is in Howell’s work we sense allusions to universal openness, and all the gradations in between lightness and darkness. Howell’s life and work inspires values of nonalignment and self-determination.
American artist James Howell (b.1935; d. 2014) used specific variations of the colors of gray, to create abstract art with focused expression, and of unparalleled subtlety. Through mathematical calculations and complex painterly process, he achieved simplicity and a calm movement of light through chromatic fields that contain no abrupt change in tempo. As he chronicles the kinesthetic phenomenon of light falling into shadow, he addresses the infinity of space and the subtle dissolution of all contours.
James Howell – Resolution and Independence is an exhibition in conversation with Josef Albers’ work, as both artists explored systems of form and color to arrive at a full pictorial expression. It is a rare and memorable opportunity to see Albers’s work together with that of Howell, in the context of the Bottroper Collection.
Dr. Heinz Liesbrock, curator of the exhibition, D Joy Howell, President and Laura Bardier, Executive Director of the James Howell Foundation, will be delighted to welcome you to the opening reception on Sunday, April 10, 2022.
About James Howell
James Howell (1935 - 2014) was born in Kansas City, Missouri and studied English Literature and Architecture at Stanford University, where he received the Stanford Humanities Prize for the Arts in 1961. Howell frequently visited the Southampton home of American painter and art critic Fairfield Porter, and the two debated the merits of figuration and abstraction. By 1968, Howell was primarily making abstract paintings, and had begun exhibiting regularly. His many years living in San Juan Island, Washington, known for its nuanced, infinitely shifting tones of gray sky, water and light, undoubtedly influenced his artistic production. In 1992, Howell moved permanently to New York. Over a five-decade career, James Howell developed systems working with color, lines and numbers, both as concepts and materials, in media ranging from etchings, drawings, paintings to site specific installations. His work has been exhibited at galleries and museums across the United States, Europe and Australia. Howell’s work has been included in many publications, among them the concise volume published in 2021 by Circa Press (London) “James Howell - Infinite Array”, author Alistair Rider.
About Dr. Heinz Liesbrock
Dr. Heinz Liesbrock studied art history, American studies, and German literature in Bochum, Germany; Swansea, Wales; and Washington, DC. From 1992 to 1999 Liesbrock was director of the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster. He then worked at the Sprengel Museum in Hanover. In March 2003, Liesbrock succeeded the founding director Ulrich Schumacher as director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop. His research, publications and curatorial activities are devoted in particular to the writings of the Bauhaus master Josef Albers, Concrete Art and American art, photography and literature as well as the works of Robert Adams, Raymond Chandler, William Eggleston, Walker Evans, Gotthard Graubner, Gary Hill, Edward Hopper, Donald Judd, Sol LeWitt, Agnes Martin, Giorgio Morandi, Ad Reinhardt, Stephen Shore, and Georg Trakl. One of his most important recent projects has been the expansion of the Bottrop museum center, which has been under construction since 2018, with a second extension (designed by Annette Gigon from the Zurich office Gigon/Guyer). The institution reopened in spring 2022.