Max Gimblett: Where Dreams Come
Max Gimblett — who recently celebrated his 90th birthday — is a painter, storyteller, teacher and Rinzai Zen monk. His third solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery focuses on his calligraphic work on paper and books, and his use of the motifs of the lotus and quatrefoil to articulate his journey.
Stylistically, his painting practice is a hybrid of the New York school of abstract expressionism and traditional Sumi ink painting. Known for his masterful brushwork and eccentric and sophisticated color sense, Gimblett marries modernism with mysticism.
Conceptually, Gimblett's work aligns with the Dharmic religions. His calligraphic practice is an all-mind/no-mind meditation that he describes as coming directly from his unconscious. In this exhibition, a series of drawings referring to the lotus (symbol for what is divine in humanity — purity and honesty, regeneration and enlightenment) evidence his spiritual aspirations.
Most significant is Gimblett's decades-long use of the four-lobed quatrefoil as a talismanic emblem. A cross-cultural motif used in Mesoamerica before the Common Era, in Islamic architecture and design since the Middle Ages and adopted into European Gothic iconography, for Gimblett, the quatrefoil, which he first encountered as a boy in his Presbyterian Church, is a healing amulet… a "shield for the heart." Central to this exhibition is a group of unique, handmade books of his calligraphy, each of which, when opened fully, forms this shape. Exquisite objects, the books, like his paintings, are meant as portals — created to move one to another place.
Born in Auckland, New Zealand in 1935, he 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 Tāmaki.
