WILLIAM CONLON

ART FOR A GOOD CAUSE

I met Royce Mulholland of The Mulholland Group (TMG) socially during the 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Royce was a generous donor for the Democratic Party and I was working on an art project in my capacity as Eliot Spitzer's campaign photographer. In a fortuitous, unexpected way we also discovered that he and I shared a love for, and had mutual interest in public art and its purposeful vision. In 2015, Royce approached me about utilizing public art as a means to “…provide the highest quality of affordable housing across the nation.” TMG wanted to include visual art into the renovation of their affordable housing property at 550 South Clinton Street, in Syracuse, NY, as a means to enrich the lives of its tenants. Although the area around the buildings had been positively transitioning with the establishment of new cultural facilities and culinary establishments, the forty-five-year-old towers at the site had fallen into disrepair over the years and crime had become a problem. The opportunity to create a positive impact on this community through contemporary art was reciprocally valued between us and I was excited to help.

Our biggest challenge was not only to mount a permanent public installation, but one that could also then be augmented periodically by local artists' work as well as the work of graduating art students from Syracuse University. Around that time, I knew that Bill was working on a series of paintings on large canvases. Although I was unaware of how many he had completed, I thought that the vibrancy and thoughtfulness of his abstract works would be a perfect fit for the project. Bill loved the idea and we soon embarked on the collaboration with TMG.

There was only one “small” problem. The building had twenty-one floors in need of one painting each and Bill had finished painting only fourteen canvases in the new series. Furthermore, site specific imperatives like damage-proof, graffiti-proof, and accident-proof, to name a few, pretty much ruled-out the feasibility of mounting actual paintings in a public space. I approached Bill, and to satisfy all of the demands, I suggested that his work should be an integral part of the building's construction. He agreed, and we decided to enlarge the paintings digitally and then print the images on linoleum flooring, one for every elevator floor landing. The planning and production jumped into action overnight with the arrivals of Hasting-on-Hudson-based master printer and digital artist Ben Diep, and Minneapolis-based Tim Wirtz of Graphic Image Flooring. Bill and Ben worked together for two months to translate fourteen paintings into mega size digital art files, in addition to creating seven new digital paintings exclusively for this series. In Ben's own words “The critical part was Bill Conlon sitting by the screen and directing me to refine the color and begin new compositions from the original ones that he had envisioned. We began by using some parts of the original fourteen paintings, then we cut out, distorted and reshaped them into new images, completely modifying them so they would not appear as 'cut and paste' copies. They were completely new images but keeping the abstraction and the design directed by Bill, as if he was painting on the monitor. Recreating the texture surfaces and matching the color of the original paintings on a new digital surface was the primary challenge. We spent many hours readjusting the colors to the spectrum range that Bill desired. It was an amazing project from an impossible to a possible one.” Tim printed the files on twenty-one adhesive-backed linoleum sheets each measuring 10 feet by 13 feet, that are currently installed in every elevator lobby at Royce Residences in Syracuse.

Sadly, Royce passed away in March 2017, a couple of months before the completion of the newly christened Royce Residences. However, the words describing his dedication to “make people feel better about their home” survive in print, in the TMG brochure.

“The Mulholland Group Introduces the Vertical Gallery

The Mulholland Group President and CEO Royce Mulholland continues his commitment to enrich culturally TMG's residential properties. Royce strongly believes that one's economic situation should not be a burden for [enjoying] the fine things in life. Working with Marius Muresanu they developed the vertical gallery at two New York properties. Calling on several national and international artists and photographers, they created two Vertical Galleries containing 73 pieces of art work for the enjoyment of TMG residents and the beautification of their communities.”

This exhibition is dedicated to Royce's memory and his dream of bringing the joy of art to the 550 South Clinton Street residents. I am grateful to Bill for his extraordinary work and for being a part of our shared belief in the importance of art in public spaces. To Ben, thanks for working closely with Bill to give life to the concept. To Tim, thanks for his dedication to fashion concrete forms from an artistic idea, and last but not least, to Royce, “Love you more!”

21 FLOORS

William Conlon has produced a powerful body of work as a painter, draughtsman, and printmaker over the past fifty years. Its importance and strength come from a seriousness of purpose and his need to keep pushing himself to not only evolve, but to advance and enrich the content, the enigmatic relationships of form, and the hidden narratives that his abstract works embody.

From the outset Conlon was committed to an expansive and expressive engagement with the tradition and potential of abstraction. His development, however, has been significantly influenced by his increasing engagement with many of the methods and mechanics of representation. Although all painting aims to communicate content, it has traditionally been the case that abstract artists have rejected the notion of overt representation. Instead, they have believed that the works should simply manifest their own meaning. Although Conlon's pictures are abstract, they address in a very contemporary way the perceptual realities of the world we inhabit. Engaged in a dialectic between abstraction and representation, Conlon's work projects an optimistic vision of the world and how we fit into it.

Conlon's art challenges easy assumptions as to how meaning is to be derived from a picture. He began his career in the 1960s committed to the belief that only through the construction of an abstract image that incorporated disparate individual non-representational elements could he make paintings that would reflect a reality relevant to his time. In his early works, such as Alphabet (date?), Conlon began the development that continues today of a lexicon of image-icons that function as the actors on the stage of his canvas. Some of these formative works extended beyond 20 feet in length, signaling the artist's invitation to the viewer to metaphorically enter onto that stage with him. Large areas of white made clear the choices the artist was making about how we inhabit and share space in the world. His referential interests became broader over time, ranging from the physical sciences, to the flood of images pouring forth in print, television, film, and via digital technology, as well as from the history of art itself. Cultural touchstone images appear over the course of his career: Islamic patterns, grids, biomorphic forms, as well as gestures referencing artists like Matisse and de Kooning.

When defining some of his influences, Conlon wrote:

Conlon's work does not grow out of inward-looking contemplation, and it does not result from a process of simplification or reduction. It is generous and exuberant, packed with stimulation, joy and complexity. His aim is to engage through visual representation with the abundant and contradictory complexity of the world, and to create a perceptual experience that allows the viewer to construct a passage through it. In order to do this, he stages improbable convergences. In his large-scale, richly chromatic painting, Dream (2015), for example, we see a balletic interweaving of the certainty underlying Alberti's early 15th century understanding of single-point perspective, and the bending, relativistic space only imaginable since Einstein. At first this work seems to offer us a calmly considered composition of forms – something very lively, but a construction that we can be at ease with. Dominating the bulk of the picture plane is an illusionistic depiction of a disc, represented by an elliptical band of small squares and dashes orbiting around a disconnected linear axis which is tilted to the right, and appears to rest, centered in a naturalistic space. This element is repeated in every work of Conlon's Collider Series, as well as each of the works in the series, 21 Floors. It depicts, for the artist, a magnetic field, a pictorial representation of a force that could actually hold all the elements of the picture in place. This centrality and the intention underlying it are challenged, however, by two large pink and blue biomorphic forms that seem to physically push things to the left, redefining the scale of the work, not as a schematic drawing, but in the quite different language and scale familiar to us from the tradition of abstract painting. Integrating these two different spatial experiences, with forms visually locking with each other, we can recalibrate the image into a dynamic, but still comfortable pictorial narrative. But Conlon pushes us beyond this sense of ostensible calm, inserting additional disruptive elements into the picture. These are six planes, each depicted as a picture in its own one-point perspective, that variously evoke a passage from an expressionistic painting, an Islamic tile pattern, a floating cell-phone-like icon with the Chinese character, “dream,” tilting back in space, and others. As we engage with the picture, any calmness we might have expected recedes. Conlon's achievement is that, despite its contradictory complexity, we are not left dislocated in chaos. There is not a sense that these disparate images and references, bright pulsating colors, and abrupt shifts of perspective are meaningless or simply random. Instead, if we, as viewers, fully participate in the work, we come through the experience with a sense of rightness – a sense that the world may be crazy, overloaded and unpredictable, but that we have a secure place in it.

Dream (2015) is a pivotal work because it grandly epitomizes Conlon's progression from the Collider Series, begun in 2010. Building on his paintings from the Collider Series, the works in 21 Floors exemplify the richness of the artist's project. They form an extended suite of works, each distinct and representing a specific enclosed arena in which his invented and appropriated forms can dance and shift, align and rupture, enlarging his and our own experience of mastery in an overloaded world.

Space, and how it is represented is of central importance to Conlon. His embrace of this challenge has led him to push his work back and forth between complexity and clarity. He can tread fairly close to chaos, but his works always provide a path, sometimes laborious but always rewarding, to understanding. In each of the twenty-one works in the series, he creates what could be called a “safe space” enclosing and bracketing the chaos. This offers viewers a sense of agency rather than assault. It is an important feature of these works that they have boundaries. Each work is clearly meant to be a contained experience orchestrated by the artist, not a slice of a larger world. Conlon's is an optimistic vision that looks with specificity at the overload and chaos we live with every day and addresses it with intellectual rigor.

Art is about specific choices, and Conlon boldly asserts his. His use of dark and light across a broad range of rich colors allows him to achieve an emotional range as well as exciting visceral purely visual effects. As scales shift, and forms seem to move through space, viewers are flipped through contradictory perceptions of their own physical orientation. It is rare that a painting can alter our proprioception, the vital sixth sense that allows us to locate our body and its parts in space. This is even difficult to achieve in more traditional sculpture: typically, it has been the purview of large-scale installations. In these prints and the paintings which inspired them, viewers are compelled to locate themselves by fully engaging with the work. That location, however, is not fixed. Rather, these works make us aware that there is no one vantage point, no one place from which we can grasp everything. They confirm the humanist view that multiplicity rather than stable certainty is a good thing.

For example, in #12, the hot pink ground pushes us away from the work while the glowing green organic form seems to move toward us in parallel to it, defining an axis at 90 degrees from the picture's surface. In counterpoint to this sensation, the jaggedly angled orange elliptical band and the lavender linear biomorph suspended above it clearly orient the picture in a deeper and much less certain space. Yet once we accustom ourselves to that space, we are thrust back into the picture, jostled to the left and right by planes resting in conflicting perspectival spaces. These pictures-within-the picture introduce concentrated detail and shift the entire scale of the work. Although ostensibly the smallest objects depicted, they become, for the viewer, huge forms, tremendously far away. As in all of the works of the series, the image is made up of characters and we enter a narrative that is ultimately of our own construction but made possible through Conlon's ability to deftly cue our senses.

The prints that make up the series, 21 Stories, result from a wonderful collaboration, which led to placing these images, enlarged to occupy an architectural space, on the floors of a residential building. As residents and visitors go up and down in the building, each floor offers a new world of Conlon's creation that can literally be walked onto. It is a telling aspect of Conlon's project that this seems so right. Conlon's work is intended to be entered and to offer us a passage that, once it has been made, leaves us more aware of the tremendously diverse world we inhabit, more aware of its potential for chaos, but, ultimately more confident in our own ability to navigate and make sense of it.

After years of painting works on canvas, this project was something exciting and different for me. It was an opportunity to create twenty-one paintings in a unique way for a new audience, the tenants of the Royce Residences, a large affordable housing complex located in downtown Syracuse, NY. The Royce Residences underwent a $20 million renovation in 2016-2017, under new ownership by the Mulholland Group, led by developer Royce Mulholland. Now that all the work has been installed and put to good use, I look back on this project as a giant printmaking edition conceived in collaboration with artist-turned-curator Marius Muresanu (in charge of the Public Art program for the property), Ben Diep, master printer and digital tech whiz, and Tim Wirtz of Graphic Image Flooring, the Minnesota company that did the beautiful vinyl flooring printing.

Ben and I spent three plus weeks in the spring of 2016, sitting in front of his large computer screens, and creating digital files inspired from high resolution photographs of fourteen original recent paintings of mine. All of the twenty-one files that emerged are original designs, not copies of the paintings – and seven of the digital files were created from scratch, using bits and pieces from the source paintings. About four months later the paintings, printed on vinyl flooring, each measuring 10' x 13', were installed in the elevator landings at the 550 South Clinton Street site. It is my hope that the tenants of the Royce Towers will enjoy these special works of art.

William Conlon
2018

Collections

• The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
• Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, N.Y.
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Bouffalo N.Y.
• Dallas Museum of Fine Art, Dallas, TX
• Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburg, PA.
• Everson Museum, Syracuse, N.Y.
• Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI.
• I.B.M. New York, N.Y.
• A.T.&T. New York, N.Y.
• Pepsico, Purches, N.Y.
• Texas Insturment, Dallas, TX.
• Chase, New York, N.Y.
• Saatchi and Saatchi, Los Angles, CA.
• Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, List Art Posters, New York, N.Y.
• American Embassie Moscow, Russia Painting to be installed in 2019

Selected Exhibitions

• Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, 1968, Contemporary Art at Yale
• Reese Palley Gallery, New York, NY, 1970 (solo)
• Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas, TX 1971, Four New York Painters
• Kunst Markt, Cologne, Germany 1971
• Reese Palley Gallery, New York, NY, 1972 (solo)
• Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY 1972
• Michael Walls Gallery, New York, NY 1974, Ten Painters in New York
• Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC 1975
• La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA 1975, Biennial Exhibition, Irvine Milieu The First Ten Years
• Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY 1977 (solo)
• New York Academy of Sciences, New York, NY, March - April 1978, Six Artists View Development
• Susan Caldwell Gallery, New York, NY February - March 1979, Generation
• Pratt Institute Gallery, Brooklyn, NY November - December 1979, Subject: Space
• Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY 1980 (solo)
• Grey Art Gallery, New York University, New York, NY September - October 1979
• Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY 1981 (solo)
• Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY November 1980 - January 1981, American Drawings in Black and White from 1970-1980
• Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, PA 1981-82, Ten-Year Retrospective (solo)
• Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Ct, January - March 1981, Twenty Artists from the Yale University Art School, 1950-1970
• Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY 1982, New Acquisitions
• DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, MA 1982, From Pong to Pac-Man
• Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD 1982, Six Abstract Painters
• Third Eye Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, Tour Venues 1984-85, Space Complex: The Invention of Space
• Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY 1985 (solo)
• Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, TX October - November 1985, Charcoal Drawings ó 1980-1985
• Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY 1986 (solo)
• Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY 1987 (solo)
• The McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX, November - December 1988
• Hokin Gallery, Palm Beach, Fl 1989 (solo)
• Peregrine Gallery, Dallas, TX, November 1988 - January 1989, New Prints: Peregrine Press
• Peregrine Gallery, Dallas, TX 1991 (solo)
• IBM Gallery of Art and Science, New York, NY, October - November 1989, Fifty Years of Collecting IBM
• Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York, NY December 1991 - January 1992, Abstract Painting: The 90's (curated by Barbara Rose)
• Hunter College Art Gallery, Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, NY March - April 1993, Hunter College M.F.A. Faculty Artists: 1981-1993
• Stark Gallery, New York, NY June-July 1995, Color, Sign, System, Sensibility
• Vesti Daine Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ. 1997 (solo)
• Faculty Exhibition, The Center Gallery, Fordham University, 1998
• Fordham College Lincoln Center, The Center Gallery, New York, NY 2002
• Fordham College Lincoln Center, The Center Gallery, New York, NY, 2006, A Painter's view of Sicily Photographs
• Ildiko Butler Gallery, 2013, Faculity Spotlight
• Primary Sources Documents SVA and the New York World 1966-1985, November 2013
• Edgewood Gallery, Yale School of Art, 2016, Hay You How Me