Installation view of The Alchemist. Picasso's Golden Path, 2024. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
Picasso's Golden Path, 2024
Acrylic, Resin, Rosanoble Gold Leaf, French Red Gold Leaf on Wood Panel
50h x 50w x 2d in
(MGi057)

Max Gimblett
Picasso's Golden Path, 2024
Acrylic, Resin, Rosanoble Gold Leaf, French Red Gold Leaf on Wood Panel
50h x 50w x 2d in
(MGi057)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
The Silent Temple, 2024
Acrylic, Aquasize, and Red Gold Leaf on Canvas
60h x 60w x 2d in
(MGi037)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
Fortress, 2021-2023
Acrylic, resin, oil size, and Caplan leaf on wood panel and canvas
25.0h x 25.0w in
(MGi030)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
The King of Kings, 2023
gesso, acrylic & vinyl polymers, oil size, Celestial
Northern Lights variegated metal leaf on canvas & wood panel
25h x 25w x 2d in
(MGi042)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
Breathless, 2024
gesso, precious metal leaves on wood panel
40h x 40w x 2d in
(MGi038)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
The Path of Return, 2023
gesso, acrylic & vinyl polymers, size, 23.75kt Rosanoble gold leaf on canvas & wood panel
25h x 25w x 2d in
(MGi040)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
Tangerine, 2023
gesso, acrylic & vinyl polymers, size, 18kt Lemon Gold leaf, clear acrylic overcoat on canvas & wood panel
25h x 25w x 2d in
(MGi041)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
Elegy, 2024
gesso, precious metal leaves on wood panel
40h x 40w x 2d in
(MGi039)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Elegy, 2024, The Edge of Night, 2024. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
The Edge of Night, 2024
Acrylic, Aquasize, and Chinese Pewter Leaf on Canvas
80h x 80w x 2d in
(MGi031)

Installation view of The Alchemist. The Edge of Night, 2024, The Pewter Garden, 2024. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
The Pewter Garden, 2024
Acrylic, Aquasize, and Chinese Pewter Leaf on Canvas
80h x 80w x 2d in
(MGi032)

Installation view of The Alchemist. The Pewter Garden, 2024, The Path of Color, 2024. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
The Path of Color, 2024
Acrylic, Aquasize, Chinese Pewter Leaf on Canvas
60h x 60w x 2d in
(MGi034)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
The Alchemist, 2024
gesso, resin, variegated metal leaves on wood panel
60h x 60w x 2d in
(MGi033)

Installation view of The Alchemist. Angel, 2006-2022, Picasso's Golden Path, 2024. Courtesy Bienvenu Steinberg & J, 2024.

Max Gimblett
Angel, 2006-2022
Gesso, acrylic, water-based size, and lemon gold and Rosanoble gold leaves on canvas
15h x 15w in
(MGi046)

Max Gimblett

The Alchemist

Opening Reception: May 23, 6 - 8 pm

May 23 - June 23, 2024

Bienvenu Steinberg & J is honored to present The Alchemist, a show of recent paintings by Max Gimblett. The exhibition’s focus is on the 88-year-old artist’s iconic quatrefoil canvases that are noteworthy both for the spiritual universality of their form and for their sumptuous use of color, light, and precious metals. In a text addressed to the artist, Lewis Hyde, scholar and essayist, writes, “You take gold to be a sign of consciousness, of alchemical transformation, of the precious and sublime…The precious metal in your work is to be understood spiritually, not literally; it bespeaks the promise of psychic transformation and healing. It is a joining of opposites.”

 

The Alchemist is the artist’s first solo appearance in New York in more than a decade. Born in New Zealand in 1935, Gimblett traveled extensively before settling in New York in 1972. His work draws on a broad range of aesthetic, intellectual and spiritual traditions that overarch the divisions between East and West. Beginning in 1983, and continuing today, Gimblett’s practice deploys the gestural dynamics of both Abstract Expressionism and Zen calligraphy onto richly layered and endlessly diverse metallic quatrefoil surfaces. While continuing to create paintings in a broad range of formats Max Gimblett’s evocation of the quatrefoil as a signifier of spirituality calls to mind the symbol’s presence in myriad cultures ranging from Buddhist mandalas to Christian rose windows. According to Chris Saines, Director of the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, “A Gimblett quatrefoil makes a contemporary object of that historic space then shifts its meaning at the surface, searching for the particular in the face of the universal.”

 

 

Max Gimblett is a painter, calligrapher, and Rinzai Zen monk. Gimblett’s paintings are a harmonious postmodern synthesis of American and Japanese art. Often working on shaped panels or canvases – tondos, ovals, and his signature four-lobed quatrefoil – he marries Abstract Expressionism, Modernism and Spiritual Abstraction with mysticism and traditions of Asian calligraphy. Masterful brushwork, an eccentric and sophisticated color sense and sensuously lush surfaces are punctuated with gilding in precious metals – a nod to alchemy, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland (in which he was raised) and Japanese lacquerware, ceramics and temple art.

 

Born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1935, Max Gimblett studied at the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1960s and has since traveled, taught and exhibited extensively across the globe. Gimblett’s work is included in major museum collections worldwide, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki.