Alan Uglow

Published to coincide with an exhibition organized by Bob Nickas, on view at David Zwirner, New York (February 19 – March 23, 2013), this indispensable catalogue on Alan Uglow (1941-2011) includes all new photography of paintings created from the early 1990s through 2010, past interviews, archival images, and an exhibition chronology illustrated with images of museum and gallery invitation cards. Uglow quickly gained a reputation as an “artist’s artist.” Working in series that evolved slowly over decades, he always remained faithful to his central vision and his practice was unaffected by the increasingly commercial demands of the art scene in the 1980s and 1990s. His paintings revolve around a subtle dialogue between notions of center and edge, and are executed gradually, with several layers of paint. They appear at once calm and dynamic, and simultaneously suggest emptiness and ground.

Work by Alan Uglow has been featured in a number of solo and group exhibitions worldwide, most recently in 2012 in the group show Stand still like the hummingbird at David Zwirner, New York. In 2010, his work was the subject of two large-scale surveys, concurrently on view in Germany at the Museum Wiesbaden and the Museum Haus Esters in Krefeld. Other recent solo exhibitions include the CCNOA – Center for Contemporary NonObjective Art, Brussels (2006) and the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (2004). His first museum solo exhibition was held in 1992 at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne.