NEW YORK

Regina Bogat

Works from 1965 to 2008

January 14 - March 14

At Zürcher Gallery, New York

Zürcher Gallery, New York is very pleased to present their sixth solo exhibition of works by Regina Bogat (b. 1928 Brooklyn, NY). This exhibition features some"landmark" paintings from 1965 hard-edge paintings to the 2008 "Star Series" paintings.

 A product of the Art Students League, Bogat was influenced early on by the theory of “Aesthetic Realism” and worked as an abstract impressionist. By 1960, she had developed her own unique style of abstraction. Bogat took an active part in New York’s art scene, frequenting 10th Street openings and the famous Cedar Bar. She developed close friendships with many art world luminaries who influenced her life and work, including Eva Hesse, Elaine de Kooning, Donald Judd, Sam Francis, Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko and Alfred Jensen, whom she married in 1963.

 She shared Eva Hesse’s inventiveness in utilizing unconventional materials in her paintings and objects, working with wooden strips, dowels, and Sculp-metal. Bogat took the step of "materializing" separations between colored planes, placing them in relief on segments of wood glued to canvas. In the late 1960s, she became more interested in pushing these separations toward bending space on the visual plane. She exercised constant pressure through repeating colored sections (a minimalist trait), and through the breaking points of lines (obvious in Aster,1967 and The Duty of King Agamemnon, Var. 1, 1966). She achieved a similar effect in other pieces by limiting the use of color only to the strips of wood glued to canvas (Untitled, 1966, November).

 In the late work of this period, a new stage was reached when Bogat introduced nylon rope to her extensive list of materials (Untitled, 1971), as well as cord and enamel on canvas (Untitled, 1973). Untitled 1971 was shown in the seminal exhibit Women choose Women which took place in 1973 at the New York Cultural Center, NY. She continued to study line through her use of these new materials, and found the “rigid” and “hard-edged” qualities of her wooden strips replaced by the “fluid” and “flexible” traits of the rope and thread. Furthermore, by pushing these fabric lines through the works’ surface, rather than gluing them onto the works’ surface, Bogat began to confront the notions of inside outside. In this way, Threaded Pieces are reminiscent of Hesse’s Ennead (1966), with the major difference being Bogat’s trademark use of bright multicolors. However, what truly ties these works together is the reference to a kind of "feminine work"– the weaving, the sewing – as well as strong sexual connotations.

In the 1980's Regina continued to disrupt the flatness of the canvas and add texture and relief to the canvas by creating a pattern with painted sticks on the surface of the painting (The Phoenix and The Mountain #5, 1980, Seven on Yellow, 1985). The color pattern that repeats on the sticks is similar to the color pattern that repeats in the cord of the cord paintings. The placement of the color and patterns on the sticks is both systematic and playful. It produces rhythm, movement, and light. Regina Bogat's interest in ancient Maya and Chinese cultures introduced her to star forms. Having used the reliable grid for decades, she found that the stars  (Ogdoadics, Heptadics, Decagons) replaced the grid.

"The star paintings lend themselves to thoughts of cosmic explosions, space dust, black holes and the birth of galaxies. Astrophysics, outer space, has been an ongoing interest of mine. Indeed, my lifelong focus on art commenced in childhood the moment my WPA art teacher showed a reproduction of Vincent van Gogh’s The Starry Night (1889) to my grade school class. This theme also appears in some of my earlier work: Aster (1967), Stardate (1969), Constellation (1969) and Galaxy (1970). However, my focus then was on the use of unconventional materials rather than the star form."  (Regina Bogat, 2019)