FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Harry Kramer - Major Paintings from the 70s

Patrick Ireland - Entrance to the Garden of Earthly Delights: An Installation

October 10 - 31, 1998

The Charles Cowles Gallery is pleased to announce two exhibitions - large paintings and drawings by HARRY KRAMER and a new installation, paintings, and drawings by PATRICK IRELAND -from October 10th through 31st, 1998. The Gallery is located at 420 West Broadway between Prince and Spring Streets. The Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10am - 6pm. There will be a reception for the artists on Tuesday, October 13th, from 6 to 8pm.

HARRY KRAMER, a gallery artist since 1991, will be exhibiting large paintings and drawings, which were created in the early 1970s. In stark contrast to his most recent work, these remarkable canvases are of an immense scale yet understated in composition and color. KRAMER fills his sportive paintings with bold geometric shapes and lines, and then mutes them with overpainting and articulate brushstrokes. Several paintings from this series were included in KRAMER's 1973 exhibition at 55 Mercer. Titled "Homage to Izaak Walton," the show referred specifically to The Compleat Angler, Walton's seventeenth century book on the pleasures of fishing. As Lawrence Campbell wrote in ArtNews at the time, KRAMER used the titles and themes of the book "as a pun on the angles and bent forms in his paintings and drawings." Each painting invites the viewer to venture inside its space, to contemplate or meditate, and to simply enjoy the experience. KRAMER has exhibited throughout the United States, and has work included in numerous collections such as The Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Detroit Institute of Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

PATRICK IRELAND, who first exhibited with the Charles Cowles Gallery in 1983, will present one of his signature Rope Drawings. These installations, which IRELAND first began to create in 1972, couple solid patches of color painted directly on the wall with three-dimensional lines that utilize the space between those walls. An early conceptualist and minimalist (he worked with LeWitt, Hesse, and Smithson, among others), IRELAND's work requires the active participation of the viewer. This collaboration coalesces as the viewer enters the piece, thus becoming an integral part of the idea as well as of the space itself. IRELAND will be presenting Entrance to the Garden of Earthly Delights at the gallery. IRELAND's extensive exhibition credits include several retrospectives, the most recent in 1993 at P.S.1 in New York. His work is in the collections of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Museum of American Art, and the Seattle Art Museum.

For further information or photographs please contact the gallery at 212/925-3500.