Geoffrey Dorfman: Antikythera

To read my art exhibition review, Geoffrey Dorfman: Antikythera at Elizabeth Moss Galleries in the March 2023 issue of the Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, click here:
Geoffrey Dorfman: Antikythera at Elizabeth Moss Galleries

Geoffrey Dorfman: Antikythera
January 27 – March 5, 2023

Elizabeth Moss Galleries
100 Fore Street, Suite B
Portland, Maine 04101
January 27 – March 5, 2023
Hours of Operation:
Tuesday – Saturday: 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Sunday: By Appointment
Telephone: (207) 804-0459
Website: www.elizabethmossgalleries.com
Email: Liz@elizabethmossgalleries.com

By Stephen Wozniak, the Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art, March 2023

Excerpt

“The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him, it gains life and being…it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life.”

― Wassily Kandinsky

“The tide goes out imperceptibly. The boulders…rise up and the ocean recedes, leaving little pools, wet weed, moss and sponge, iridescence and brown and blue and China red. On the bottoms lie the incredible refuse…shells broken and bits of skeleton, claws; the whole sea bottom, a fantastic cemetery on which the living scamper and scramble.” — John Steinbeck

The ancient Antikythera astronomical device found off the Greek isle shores inspired artist Geoffrey Dorfman to evaluate and materialize the ideas and discoveries that have often flooded the minds and stirred the souls of metaphysicians, astronomers and philosophers over the centuries. A key point of examination includes Dorfman’s interest in defining a formal, finite reality in what is the vast, unevenly expanding universe. “There are local contractions everywhere: stars, planets, galaxies, and black holes that will exist for uncountable eons. I notice something similar in my work. Expansion is not a steady state, but rather an unpredictable, and, at times, even spasmodic one,” Dorfman explains.

When you look at the works of Dorfman, you can see the tug and tussle between the formed and formless, the center and periphery and other key contrasts – even beyond the binary – that ultimately render the work whole. The emergence of elegant, amorphous, primordial forms in his paintings provide more of an interactive, moving experience over time than present allusive narrative themes. To Dorfman, painting “is not so much an assemblage of lines, shapes and colors, as a balance of forces” that largely “need to reach agreement with each other” and, when culminating in a painting, “must appear as an entirety.”

Links

Geoffrey Dorfman website: https://geoffreydorfman.com/antikythera-series
Elizabeth Moss Galleries: www.elizabethmossgalleries.com
Elizabeth Moss Galleries Instagram: @mossgalleries
Stephen Wozniak websites: https://stephenwozniakart.com and https://stephenwozniak.com
Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art website: https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/antikythera-at-elizabeth-moss-galleries/5704

About Geoffrey Dorfman

Geoffrey Dorfman is a painter, curator, teacher and writer on cultural history. He is a trustee of the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation and a recipient of an NEA Individual Fellowship Grant. He received a B.F.A. from Cooper Union and an M.F.A. from Syracuse University. He has taught at Parsons School of Design, Dartmouth College and has been an Adjunct Associate Professor at the City University of New York for four decades.

Dorfman has been featured in the New York Times and Brooklyn Rail and has authored articles for Artforum and Playbill, among numerous other publications. He is the author of the critically hailed book, Out of the Picture: Milton Resnick and the New York School. He also contributed to Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Newman Collection for the Metropolitan Museum of Art published by Yale University Press.

Dorfman has exhibited his work extensively, including shows at the Painting Center in NYC, Ober Gallery and a solo exhibition at Rider University. He also curated the Hans Hofmann: The Legacy exhibition at the Painting Center, among other fine art exhibitions. 

About Stephen Wozniak

Stephen Wozniak is a visual artist, writer, and actor based in Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited in the Bradbury Art Museum, Cameron Art Museum, Leo Castelli Gallery, and Lincoln Center. He has performed principal roles on Star Trek: Enterprise, NCIS: Los Angeles, and the double Emmy Award-nominated Time Machine: Beyond the Da Vinci Code. He co-hosted the performing arts series Center Stage on KXLU radio in Los Angeles and guest hosts Art World: The Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art podcast in New York City. He earned a B.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art and attended Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. To learn more, go to: www.stephenwozniakart.com and www.stephenwozniak.com. Follow Stephen on Instagram at @stephenwozniakart and @thestephenwozniak.

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