by Sharon Butler

In the 1960s, Jack Tworkov began to feel as if he had taken Ab-Ex gestural abstraction as far as it could go without repeating himself. Reluctant to keep making paintings in which the once wild and expressive brushstroke would appear a predictable go-to move determined more by experience rather than experimentation, Tworkov began thinking about the relationship between spontaneity and discipline. Could these features be combined in a new approach to painting? By turning the process around and creating a geometric framework that was by design predictive, Tworkov was able to re-imagine, and in the process reinvigorate, the expressive brushstroke. His investigation began with a series of drawings, some of which are on view at Minus Space through May 1. The series of large-scale geometric abstractions that his rigorous investigation ultimately yielded are on view at Van Doren Waxter through March 20.

To put Tworkov’s practice into context, by the mid-1960s, Abstract Expressionist action painting had become a cliché. Young artists like Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly, and Sol Lewitt had made geometric form the focus of their reductive art practices. This shift suited the anti-illusionist, pro-realist theories of minimalists like Donald Judd and Dan Flavin. It certainly intrigued Tworkov, who integrated geometric form with expressive touch and mark making. His paintings from the 1970s thus constitute a bridge from the old Ab-Exers to the emerging Minimalists.