This exhibition of Jerry Rudquist’s work, held by his family since the time of his death in 2001, is a thematic retrospective demonstrating the interconnected premise and contemporary relevance of the multiple series throughout Rudquist’s career.

The exhibition begins with the captivating colorwork shown in Rudquist’s head studies and figurative work. While a likeness is achieved in these studies, Rudquist’s ultimate goal was the study of the shape of a sitter’s head and the uniqueness of their features. Color becomes the star of the show. Rudquist’s coloristic decisions, as demonstrated in “Head Study – Alice” and “Descriptive Study –  Runner”, are relevant thirty and forty years later in the current environment of online creative content. Artists born after 2000 use the language of graphic design found in Rudquist’s figurative work: contrast, saturation, boldness, balance, negative space, gradient, etc., to boost engagement in a sensory speedway of information.

“Head Study – Nose” and an early “Head and Figure” provide the connection between Rudquist’s extensive workings in figurative and abstract practices. The two paintings are similarly composed, presenting a head in profile with limited description of other facial features. Over decades of working in abstraction, traces of the human form are frequently evident as limbs, torsos, tendons and bone.

Thematic and visual relevance in Rudquist’s work of the late 20th century remains, twenty four years after his death. In his “Must We Always Expect War” series (not installed in the exhibition), Rudquist artfully and painfully examines the self-destructive nature of humanity, combining corporeal imagery and existential abstraction. The timeliness of Rudquist’s examinations extend further into the present to include the uncertainty and marvel of space exploration. Rudquist’s participation in NASA’s Fine Art Program of the mid 1960s resulted in the “Gemini” series of paintings (not installed in the exhibition), whose bold, brutalist forms are consistent with Rudquist’s early abstract work.

Beyond Jerry Rudquist’s tangible legacy of this remarkable body of work, are the myriad students who continue the practices he taught, and those students’ students, in perpetuity. A lifetime of sharing ideas built a sustained network of artists whose work it is to grapple with questions of art, science, and philosophy.

 

 

“The Painted Eye,” (1997) Mike Hazard – extended version