A risk taker in the Abstract Expressionist tradition,
Gary Komarin was born in New York City, the son of a Czech architect and a Viennese writer.
Komarin’s stalwart images have an epic quality that
grips the viewer with the idea that he or she is looking at a contemporary description of something timeless. For painter
Gary Komarin, abstraction has never been a formal dead end.
Rather, it has allowed him to challenge
the limitations of the style to make painting ‘include more’ precisely because a recognizeable image excludes too much.
Komarin has exhibited extensively throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and Asia. In 2008 he had a solo
Museum exhibition at the Musée Kiyoharu Shirakaba in Japan. The exhibition and catalogue, Moon Flows Like a Willow, was
orchestrated by the Yoshii Foundation in Tokyo with galleries in New York, Tokyo and Paris.
In 1996 Komarin’s work was included in
a pivotal exhibition at 41 Greene Street, New York, where his work was shown with the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat,
Philip Guston and Bill Traylor.
Gary Komarin has been honored with the
Joan Mitchell Prize in Painting, The New York Foundation for the Arts Grant in Painting, the Edward Albee Foundation
Fellowship in Painting, the Elizabeth Foundation New York Prize in Painting and the Benjamin Altman Prize in Painting from
The National Academy of Design Museum, New York. Articles and essays about Komarin’s work have been published in The New
York Times, Art in America, and Arts Magazine among others.
His work may be found in many noted
public collections including The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Yoshii Foundation, Tokyo; The Montclair Art Museum, New
Jersey; Boston University Museum of Fine Arts; The Microsoft Corporation, Galerie Proarta, Zurich; Blount International,
Atlanta; The United Bank of Houston, The Hyatt Corporation and American Airlines. Private collections include John McEnroe,
New York; Candace Bushnell, New York; The N. Horiuchi Collection, Tokyo; Maxwell Davidson, New York; The Gisep Biert
Collection, Zurich; The Abrussezze Collection, New York; The Broadbent Collection, London; The Ron Gremillion Collection,
Houston; Mason Klein, The Jewish Museum, New York; Kathryn McCarver Root, New York; Tim Jeffries, London; Robert Lamb,
Chicago; Toby Clarke, London; Meredith Long, Houston; David Alan Greer, Los Angeles; Jeffrey Hoffeld, New York; Luke Honey,
London; Marian Boesky, New York; Tim Culbert, New York; Wendy Olsoff, New York; The Gonzalo Alvar Collection, Madrid; Ruth
O’Hara, New York; Garner Tullis, New York; Karen Kelley, New York; Visko Hatfield, Connecticut, Florence de Dampinerre,
Connecticut, Harry and Randy Moses, Connecticut, and John and Ellen Steitler, Connecticut.
Komarin lives and works in a house and
studio in the wooded hills of Roxbury, Connecticut. He is currently preparing for exhibitions in Tokyo, Paris, New York,
Zurich, Dubai and London.
Dean Jenson
New York, NY |
