CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 2/24/2020

Surprising, previously unseen works on paper by Barkley L. Hendricks

"No Title" (1970) is reproduced from Barkley L. Hendricks: Works on Paper, the first in a five-volume series from Skira and Jack Shainman Gallery. Collecting recently discovered works, this volume is somewhat of a revelation, as many of the pieces would not be immediately identifiable with Hendricks' iconic formal portrait style. "In the 1970s, several solar eclipses occurred, visible at various points in North America," Laila Pedro writes. "Hendricks, a technician of light who was fascinated by its functioning in paint, photograph and gold, seems to have been creatively stimulated and intrigued by the massive astronomical phenomenon. He produced a strikingly innovative, fresh set of multimedia experiments that are as freewheeling as they are cerebral and inventive. They share in common a kind of mystical abstracted landscape, with pyramids, sometimes magi, and celestial bodies. In some of them, landscapes are constructed with collage elements like postcards and stamps, in a nearly Dadaesque combination of elements, codes, jokes and puns, or sometimes covered with repeating scribbles."