User:Alxcreative/sandbox

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Through Stella, Rose and others, Ashbaugh was introduced to many of the well-known working artists, performers, collectors, and gallery owners in New York City, many of whom frequented Max’s Kansas City, such as John Chamberlain, Andy Warhol, Larry Poons, Nancy Graves, Carl André, Brice Marden, Robert Rauschenberg.

Ashbaugh leased a studio on Murray Street in Tribeca. He began working on a series entitled “The Ovals” (a reference to Larry Poons): large fiberglass paintings using an elliptical format and drums of polyester resin. The unyielding, flat surfaces and intentionally ragged edges, obliquely allude to the matte encaustic surfaces that Brice Marden and Jasper Johns were using at the time, albeit with a California twist.

These paintings and drawings evolved directly from the artwork last painted in Costa Mesa, California, and were exhibited at the La Jolla Museum of Art and the Orange County Museum of Art.

67 Greene Street: “The Shineys” (1971-1972)

In 1971, the art dealer Ileana Sonnabend and Henry Geldzahler tipped off Ashbaugh to a street-level space in the center of SoHo. After watching the World Trade Center being built several blocks away, Ashbaugh sold his Murray Street loft to performance artist Laurie Anderson and moved to 67 Greene Street, a space capable of accommodating large paintings. Here, Ashbaugh began “The Shineys”—a series of fiberglass paintings, many as large as 120” by 240”. The surfaces were glass-like, using polyester resin, industrial dyes and pigments.

The Shineys were exhibited in solo exhibitions in Sweden, Florida, and California, and acquired by the Orange County Museum of Art and Artforum Magazine.

The Whitney Museum Solo Exhibition: Russian Agitprop Series (1975)

Due to the 1973 Oil Crisis, using 50-gallon drums and barrels of polyester resins became impossible as prices soared beyond Ashbaugh's means. For inspiration, Ashbaugh turned to the Russian Revolution of 1917, the beginning of abstract, non-objective painting with Malevich, Tatlin, and Lissitzky who themselves were abandoned by the state. Ashbaugh’s paintings were enormous (approximately 120 x 240 inches) and came away six inches from the wall. The hues were limited to primary colors with an unsettling inclusion of a tertiary palette. They were made with oil, and beeswax using an encaustic process, and titled in Russian.

In 1975, the entire series, curated by Marcia Tucker, became a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum, as well as in Belgium and France.

Laguna Canyon: The Tijuana to Canada Series (1975-1976)

Ashbaugh decided to make work in the warmer months in Laguna Beach, California where he leased an unfinished indoor-outdoor building with 50-foot ceilings, without doors or windows. He lived in a scaffolding to avoid scorpions and rattlesnakes.

While moving studio equipment from New York to the Canyon Studio, Ashbaugh was startled to hear loud noises and sonic booms. Flying at Mach speed, stealth bombers from Camp Pendleton and El Toro Marine Base were practice-flying up and down the canyon corridor. Their twisting, foreshortened configurations were reminiscent to Ashbaugh of the Suprematism work of Malevich and Lissitzky. In addition they were constructed with Vantablack which disguises all contours. Ashbaugh created large, unwieldy-shaped canvases with the flattest matte paint then available. The paintings were titled for the test flight corridor being used from Tijuana to Canada.

Ashbaugh was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976.

Greene Street Studio: The Nazca Series (1976-1977)

In 1976, Thomas M. Messer, Director of the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York, recruited Ashbaugh to help organize and install Alfred Jensen's exhibition for the São Paulo Art Biennial representing the United States. Ashbaugh finished the installation and was keenly aware of the earthworks that were championed by Virginia Dwan, Michael Heizer, Robert Smithson, and Walter De Maria and that were being created in the Nevada desert.

Jensen was well-versed Incan earth drawings and suggested that Ashbaugh travel to Peru and fly over the Nazca Lines in person. Upon arrival, Ashbaugh contacted Maria Reiche, the esteemed German scholar and mathematician who had been studying cataloging and protecting the drawings in Nazca since 1946. When Ashbaugh returned to New York City, he began construction of the heavily contorted and large 10’x20' shaped Nazca canvas paintings. Ashbaugh thought of them as anthropomorphized planar geometry or as alien landing strips and imagined them placed on a wall vertically, not flat on the ground as in the earth works in Nazca and Nevada.

Founder Alanna Heiss at PS1 Project Room in Brooklyn, now the Museum of Modern Art, curated the construction and installation of the work influenced by his Peru trip.

San Onofre Woofers Series: Double and Triple Shadows (1979-1984)

At the Dia Art Foundation, Ashbaugh saw from Andy Warhol’s Hammer and Sickle work, that two shapes, even three distinct shapes, would cast only one combined shadow. He began a series paintings with multiple images but only one combined shadow. This work is loosely painted in fluorescent pigments with swaths of glow-in-the-dark pigments. Seen with the lights off, they eerily resemble the frenetic brushwork of Willem de Kooning or Franz Kline. Ashbaugh was fascinated by the new technology of paint chemistry and also applied flocking to the surfaces. These paintings were exhibited globally, traveling to England, Portugal, Australia, and South Africa.

In 1979, The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City acquired a 108” x 108” inch painting from the series titled “New Yorker Faces Iran Spy Trial.” The title came from a headline of the sensationalist tabloid the New York Post, as was each painting in the entire Woofer Series.

Since 1974, Ashbaugh has focused on the First Amendment with concern for the degradation of journalistic news into a propaganda tool or a pop culture sales hook. Ashbaugh’s San Onofre Series (1980) had solo exhibitions at Knoedler Kasmin Gallery in London, the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago, as well as acquisitions by the Hirshhorn Museum of Art in Washington, D.C. and at Stanford, California, the Orange County Museum of Art, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

The Fashion World exploits (1983-1984)

in 1983, Anna Wintour, the newly appointed editor of New York, asked a group of artists, including Dennis Ashbaugh, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Salle, for permission to include their work in a fashion shoot for publication. The issue was called “The Art Beat.” Wintour was enamored with way that Ashbaugh had included the models into the staged artwork and made the decision to use this image as the magazine’s centerfold. When told of the image’s placement Ashbaugh requested that the centerfold become a "'scratch and sniff" that smelled like the models’ perfume, a tribute to old porn magazines, a proposal that was of course vetoed. The popular issue catapulted Ms. Wintour to the position of editor in chief of Vogue. Ms. Wintour and Alexander Liberman commissioned Ashbaugh to do an eight-page spread for Condé Nast using his brightly colored images.

Interactive Paintings: The Clone Series (1987)

With the many advancements in DNA and computer technologies, there had to be a viable path forward for abstract painting. As Barbara Rose stated, “Like Pollock, Ashbaugh is keenly aware that innovations in technology require a thoughtful response from artists who are awake to their own time.” He began working on the large-scale highly colorful Clone Series, conceptually based on the idea that entirety of art history could be placed on a single floppy disk. These paintings were shown in a retrospective at IVAM in Valencia, Spain.

Computer Viruses (1988-1990)

In 1988 the first computer virus was created by Robert Tappan Morris, a Cornell University student. Ashbaugh recognized it as a major technological and cultural event wherein computer information could be created then co-opted and deleted. He believed it was a paradigm shift—that information would never again be the same. Reminded of Robert Rauschenberg’s erasure of the Willem de Kooning drawing, Ashbaugh embarked on painting a series of large black and fluorescent works using the visual images located in the aftermath of a virus attack, or in his words, “a new beginning.” The works were painted with glossy industrial floor enamel appearing as blank television screens with color charts, inserted on either the upper or lower framing edge. Solo exhibitions followed at the Marisa del Re Gallery, Paul Kasmin Gallery, and IVAM in Valencia, Spain.

DNA Gene Stain Paintings (1989-1990)

The Human Genome Project, launched in 1990 by James Watson and Craig Venter gave Ashbaugh the idea of the Gene Stain Paintings. He used washes of color, alluding to Morris Louis’s stain paintings and subtle markings on large-scale canvases.

When art history scholar and critic Robert Rosenblum first saw ths work in the 1990, he remarked "Why would anyone want to make stain paintings[link] now"? [reference], Rosenblum later called the artist to say he finally understood the paintings as he and his wife had recently had a DNA test. Ashbaugh reminded the critic that as early as 1946, Barnett Newman had painted a work titled “The Genetic Moment.” These paintings were executed at various makeshift outdoor studios that Ashbaugh erected because of the extreme toxicity of the paints used.

The Gene Stain Paintings were exhibited at the National Academy of Sciences, the Marisa del Re Gallery, the Paul Kasmin Gallery and IVAM. Print editions were acquired by Microsoft Corporation, Lincoln Center, and State Department art collections in Embassies.

Agrippa (A Book of the Dead) (1992)

A collaborative artist’s book by William Gibson and Dennis Ashbaugh was published in 1992 in two limited editions (Deluxe and Small) and entitled Agrippa (A Book of the Dead). The book included copperplate aquatint etchings (Ashbaugh) and a poem (Gibson).

The deluxe edition of Agrippa was set in Monotype Gill Sans at Golgonooza Letter Foundry, and printed on Rives heavyweight by the Sun Hill Press and by Kevin Begos Jr. Ashbaugh’s etchings were editioned by Peter Pettingill on Fabriano Tiepolo paper. The book was hand sewn and bound in linen by Karl Foulkes. The housing was designed by the Ashbaugh, and the encryption code used to destroy the story was created by (BRASH). The regular edition of Agrippa was also set in Monotype Gill Sans, but in a single column page format. It was printed by the Sun Hill Press on Mohawk Superfine text and the reproductions of the etchings were printed on a Canon laser printer.

Degraded DNA Paintings (1995-1996)

In the early 1990s, there was much discussion in the forensic and scientific communities, as well as in the culture at large, as to what fraction of DNA was required to make an accurate analysis of ancestry, race and origin. Working outdoors, Ashbaugh became aware of rust as well as the elements of sun, acid rain, and snow to cause entropic decay. He used Corten steel dust, and fugitive fluorescent pigments, which degrade with ultraviolet rays, on large canvases and placed them outside for a year. The components turned into a rich rusted patina on 108” x 108”canvases. They resembled used paintings and made allusions to the paintings of Anselm Kieffer and Julian Schnabel and were exhibited at Marisa del Re Gallery, and IVAM.

Hiding in Plain Sight (2004-2007)

The issues of privacy and identity became a deep concern for Ashbaugh. In 2006, the company 23andMe, began selling DNA kits for purposes of genealogical inquiry—individual heritage studies for home use—accumulating vast quantities of data. Later at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge Massachusetts, Ashbaugh met Yaniv Erlich a young Israeli scientist whose laboratory had just determined that no genetic information is private and can be accessed by anyone.

Ashbaugh had been painting large DNA works with saturated colors like the washes of his earlier series. Each of the brightly colored paintings of a typical human genetic sequence were now covered with camouflage so that any adequate reading of the sequence could not be accurately determined. These paintings came about at the same time that the artist had given up all hope for a meaningful future with genetic research as a positive tool for the advancement of humanity.

This series was shown at IVAM in Valencia, Spain, as a part of the major Ashbaugh retrospective organized by critic Barbara Rose.

Selected Awards

American Academy in Rome, Visitor (2005)

First Place, United States Olympic Architecture Design Competition (1996)

John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (1976)

C.A.P.S., New York State Council on the Arts (1975)

Museum Patrons Award, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Harbor, CA (1966)

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Institut Valencia d’Art Modern IVAM (a retrospective of works), Valencia, Spain (2007)

National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC (2006)

Margulies-Taplan Gallery, Miami, FL (1994)

Marisa, del Re Gallery, New York, NY (1993)

The Americas Society, New York, NY (1992)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Mezzanine Gallery, New York, NY (1992)

The Kitchen, New York, NY (1992)

Margulies-Taplan Gallery, Miami, FL (1991)

Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY (1990)

Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, NY (1989)

Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY (1982)

Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, IL (1982)

Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY (1982)

Kasmin-Knoedler Gallery, London, England (1981)

Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY (1980)

Janie C. Lee Gallery, Houston, TX(1980)

PS I, Long Island City, NY (1977)

Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA (1976)

Gallery Farideh Cadot, Paris, France (1970)

Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (1975)

Galleri Ostergren, Malmo, Sweden (1972)

Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, CA (1971)

La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA (1970)

Selected Network Coverage

"Paradise Now A Focus, Regional News Network, NY/CT/NJ, September 12, 2000.

"Art and Mind" produced by Mimi Tompkins, Bravo Television, December 2000.

"Gene Thoughts," Australia Television, December 2000.

"Agrippa," CBS, December 18, 1992.

"Agrippa," ZDF Television, Germany, December, 1992.