Gary Komarin is an American painter and printmaker known for his abstract, gestural works that often incorporate written text. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1950 and received his BFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1972. Komarin began his career as a painter in the 1970s, and his work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's annual exhibition of emerging artists in 1978.
Throughout his career, Komarin has exhibited his work widely in galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. In addition to his work as a painter, he has also produced a number of prints and artist's books. Komarin's work is included in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has also been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Gary Komarin’s vocabulary consists of whimsical, emblematic images that are stylistic hybrids of the figural and abstract. In his monotypes, Komarin continues using recurrent images found in his paintings and allows them to trigger other associations.
In his first residency, Komarin began working with stock fashion magazine images by printing and adding color forms to a collaged central element. These first small monotype collages soon gave way to larger format works that moved Komarin into experimentation with loose gestures.
In subsequent studio visits, the artist attempted to link abstraction with formal composition while diminishing the narrative component. Constantly eager to follow the process where it would lead, Komarin shifted back and forth between adding to earlier half-finished prints and working new plates –creating multiple meanings and embracing fortuitous “mistakes” — until each composition seemed to surface effortlessly from his direction. This unique monotype collection is exclusively available at Hemmings Gallery in Sun Valley, Idaho.
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Microsoft Corporation; Museum of Fine Arts Houston; ATT Corporation; The Nordstrom Corporation; Continental Airlines; Blount Corporation; Galerie Proarta, Zurich; Prudential Insurance Company of America; Montclair Art Museum; Boston University Art Museum; United Bank of Houston; McDonalds Corporation; Newark Museum
