Grids: A selection of paintings by Lynne Golob Gelfman

This exhibition examines the paintings of Miami-based artist Lynne Golob Gelfman in relation to the Modernist tradition of the grid. Through repetition of both linear and geometric forms, the artist’s diverse series reveal her interest in late-modernist explorations of this rectilinear form, while concurrently evidencing her resistance to its formal rules and cool abstraction, through her references to non-western aesthetics and both the urban and natural environment of Miami. 

While presenting examples from as early as 1968 when the artist was working in New York, to her first paintings produced after her move to Miami in 1972, the exhibition focuses primarily on paintings produced during the last two decades. Including works from PAMM’s collection, examples from five distinct series are on view. The “oil and sand” series references the curling, linear metal work used in many working-class neighborhoods in Miami to secure windows and gates. Her “between” paintings transform the grid of chain-link fences, often used to aggressively divide urban spaces, into shimmering, transparent patterns that recall the movement of sunlight on the sea. The artist has lived and worked at various times in Colombia, where she has investigated indigenous textile and basket weaving techniques. Series that evidence these influences include “lines,” where invisible horizontal markings interact with applications of dripping paint that move vertically down the surface, creating a patterning that recall the irregular grids of textiles. The “thru” series additionally recalls weaving patterns, through its use of repeating triangle and square forms. The artist began this series in the 1970s but has returned to it in recent years, producing works at varying scales and formats. These paintings involve the application of paint on one side of the canvas and allowing it to seep through that canvas in irregular ways, with the final painting displaying this other side. The resulting effect, which mixes the color of the raw canvas with pale washes of paint, evokes the bleaching effects of tropical sunlight.

Gelfman’s early training involved exposure to late-modernist abstraction’s emphasis on non-representational forms, with value placed on painting self-consciously evidencing its own materiality as a two-dimensional, rectilinear form. References to grids served as one extreme example of these interests, as seen in the work of early modernists such as Piet Mondrian or Kazimir Malévich, or later in the 1960s paintings of Agnes Martin or Sol Lewitt. The art historian Rosalind Kraus, in her influential essay “Grids” from 1978, explored this aesthetic trajectory, describing this form as “mythic,” in the way that it came to reference both painting’s materiality, while concurrently serving as symbol of a new, non-religious spirituality within Modernism. Gelfman’s early New York works display these influences in her use of serial, flat forms organized in grid patterns. These interests persisted with her move to Miami and within her works produced during the last two decades. Yet her grids have continually been contaminated, breaking with these formal rules of Modernism, through the artist’s everyday contexts, to the diverse cultures and environments, to the shifting light, patterns and rhythms, to which they habitually respond.

Lynne Golob Gelfman (b. 1944, New York) lives and works in Miami. She received a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York, and an MFA from the School of the Arts, Columbia University, New York. She taught art at the Dalton School in Manhattan from 1968 to 1972, when she and her husband started a flower farm outside Bogotá and moved to Miami, an import gateway for the flowers. Gelfman’s work has been presented in more than 40 solo exhibitions. Her first solo show, in 1974, was the result of a prize awarded by Miami Metropolitan Museum and Art Center, then under the leadership of Arnold Lehman. Gelfman has since presented solo exhibitions at, among others, Marisa Newman Projects, New York; Noguchi Breton, Miami; William Siegal Gallery, Santa Fe; Dimensions Variable, Miami; the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Florida International University, Miami; Alejandra von Hartz Gallery, Miami; Carol Jazzar Gallery, Miami; Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami; Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York; and Suite 106, New York. Her work is in many public and private collections, including Pérez Art Museum Miami; Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; Baltimore Museum of Art; and Detroit Institute of Arts. Gelfman has taught art at Florida International University, University of Miami, Miami Dade College, Miami Metropolitan Museum and Art Center, and Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami. For the last 15 years, she has developed art projects with inner-city children at the Barnyard, Coconut Grove.

Grids: A Selection of Paintings by Lynne Golob Gelfman is organized by PAMM Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander.

Related Programming
Opening of Grids: A Selection of Paintings by Lynne Golob Gelfman
September 15, 3-6pm
Celebrate the opening of Grids: A Selection of Paintings by Lynne Golob Gelfman with a walk through of the exhibition with artist Lynne Golob Gelfman and PAMM Chief Curator Tobias Ostrander. Following the walk through join us for a toast to the artist on the Joy Terrace with complimentary bites and beverages.