“We’re not going to get rid of chaos and complexity,” Al Held famously said, “but we can find a way to live with them.” Held’s way of living with chaos and complexity was to paint razor-sharp geometric shapes. His “concrete abstractions” were developed to break free of the flatness he perceived in Abstract Expressionism. Here, paintings from his early days in New York, during the rebellious 60s, display both epic scale and human proportions. —E.C.
Al Held: The Sixties
White Cube Bermondsey
144-152, Bermondsey St, Bermondsey, London SE1 3TQ, United Kingdom
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