Josh Sperling (born 1984 in Oneonta, New York) draws on the language of
minimalist painting from the 1960s and 1970s, primarily working with shaped canvases. He crafts intricate plywood supports over which canvas is stretched and painted in a signature palette of saturated, sometimes clashing colors. In their three-dimensionality, his works blur the lines between painting and sculpture, image and object. Mining a wide range of sources, from design to art history, Sperling has crafted a unique visual vocabulary remarkable for its expressive quality and irrepressible energy.
On the border between
painting and
sculpture, Josh Sperling's approach is based on the exploration of dynamic forms assembled together. The result is reminiscent of the squiggle game invented by the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott for the young children and practised in therapy to establish a link between the child and his therapist. Taking up the "less is more" approach of the minimalist works of the 1960s in the United States, Sperling's intention is to put the painting into volume and to exploit his work as an architectural element, creating a new visual balance with shapes and colours. These abstract assemblages are nonetheless titled, but the artist distances himself from any desire for representation by encouraging the viewers to use their imagination for interpretation.
