Tom Krumpak's "Bamboo tall..."

Lora Schlesinger Gallery is pleased to announce Tom Krumpak’sfirst solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition opens with the artist’s reception on Saturday, December 12, from 5-7 pm and is on view through January 23, 2016. Krumpak’s meticulous abstract paintings are an exploration of color and shape, methodically arranged to produce potent color field abstractions that pack a visual punch.

The exhibition titled in Haiku form, Bamboo tall, blue sky, a painted abstract picture, inside wooden room is comprised of a body of work, inspired by the relationship between Mid-20th-Century Modern architectural design and traditional Japanese Shoji screened dwellings found in the United States and Japan. Built in a similar style, the artist considers his studio to be an “artistic pictorial construction site” providing the necessary visual elements that formulate and inform his work. Krumpak makes tracings of random patterns found on paint palettes, marks and splashes left on work tables or on his own clothing, momentary stacks of paint cans and books, piles of sea shells or collected rocks, scattered architectural renderings, historical photos and drawings of the surrounding landscape. He intermixes them with bits of personal history such as text, poetry, music lyrics and anything that captures place, the past and the present. The result is a body of work that is an obsessive exploration of place and being, time and space.

Tom Krumpak has exhibited internationally since 1976. He earned a Master of Fine Arts Degree from California State University Long Beach and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the San Francisco Art institute. He has been a professor of drawing and painting at California State University Long Beach since 1983.