Larry Zox

Installation View, Larry Zox: Gemini, Berry Campbell, New York, 2024.

Harmon Siegel for Artforum
March 2024

Why do some “Gemini” paintings succeed where others fail? As I study a given example from Larry Zox’s 1967–69 series of concave polygons, I feel that I know when one is working, but not necessarily why. It would satisfy no one to shrug, “I just like it,” or to cite some personal preference for a particular color combination. To apply standards enumerated in advance or derived from encounters with other artists’ work would also be misguided. Perhaps I should simply refrain from any qualitative judgments, disavow my initial instincts and restrict myself to neutral description. Yet their seriality invites––even demands––assessment, for it follows such tightly defined parameters that each canvas is directly comparable to the others. We are then left with the question: What criteria do the paintings themselves pose to help us evaluate them on their own terms?

Zox (1937–2006) named his series for its principal figure: his riff on the astrological sign. The eponymous shape is eight-sided and hard-edged, as though someone had pinched each side of a Bicycle playing card to form an obtuse angle. One so-called gemini molds four triangles in its negative space. Each composition thus comprises five figures with which the artist can try unique color combinations. As a whole, the series assays this configuration’s pictorial properties, testing its possibilities. In some of the earlier works on display, horizontal stripes cut across the central shape, while later ones distilled the artist’s project into a finite number of core variables.

The figure can be more or less symmetrical along one or both axes. Very slight unevenness among the four angles has an outsize effect on overall balance. Zox also played with contour, whether and how much to outline the edges. A slight white border amplifies figure/ground ambiguity between the gemini and the oblique triangles to each of its four sides. A thicker band does the opposite, thrusting the design off the surface, especially when bisected by a thin stroke of vibrant color. The acute angles that form the gemini’s points are usually congruent with the corners of the canvas, enhancing its graphicness. But when they seem to slip out of bounds or stop short of the edge, the whole surface becomes painterly. To that end, the artist varied his application, either embracing a housepainter’s uniformity or disavowing it via subtle gradations of opacity. 

More dramatic effects come with color, number, and size. Zox claimed that he chose his hues randomly. Whether or not that is true, the juxtapositions usually feel well-calibrated to the gestalt. They can play a compensatory role, offsetting imbalances in geometric structure or perceived weight, as in Palanpup [sic], 1967, in which mauve and terra-cotta triangles seem to stop the airy, robin’s-egg Gemini from floating away. Or they can exaggerate the gestalt, as in one of the untitled works from 1969, where dusky surroundings intensify the void-like darkness of the center form. That year, Zox also experimented with repetition, placing double and triple Geminis laterally on horizontal canvases. Where their corners meet, the facing triangles form a diamond, amplifying figure/ground oscillation to the point of optical illusion. When the central motifs are all the same tone, the frame feels arbitrary, as though the pattern could continue ad infinitum. When the motifs are differently colored, the work enforces internal unity, dynamized by ineluctable imbalances.

While scale is relatively constant, the dimensions of Zox’s paintings can range from fifteen by fifteen inches to more than seven by seven feet. The difference prompts wildly disparate forms of bodily engagement. When more uneven design combines with points in the corners, the largest works evoke biomorphic forms. The points become tacks pinning the gemini in place, its span recalling the slaughtered oxen of Rembrandt or Chaim Soutine. 

So why do some geminis work better than others? Because each is an experiment. As Zox modulated the series’ constitutive variables, he produced a series of singular results. Counterintuitively, the invariant parameters yielded unusual risk, for the success of each work teetered on the slightest adjustment to each element. The paintings thus gestated in a medium of uncertainty, resolved only when the last mark was made.

Berry Campbell: Community
August 11 - 14, 2022
Berry Campbell at Ashawagh hall
780 Springs Fireplace Road
 East Hampton, New York 11937

Preview Exhibiton

Chelsea to Springs

Chelsea’s Berry Campbell Gallery takes over Ashawagh Hall in Springs from today through Sunday with a large group exhibition of artists, past and present, with strong East End connections.

The show includes works by Mary Abbott, Alice Baber, Nanette Carter, Dan Christensen, Eric Dever, Elaine de Kooning, Perle Fine, Grace Hartigan, Raymond Hendler, John Opper, Charlotte Park, Betty Parsons, Mike Solomon, Syd Solomon, Hedda Sterne, Susan Vecsey, Lucia Wilcox, Frank Wimberley, and Larry Zox.

Gallery hours are today through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., and noon to 6 on Sunday.

Hard-Edged Geometric Abstraction
Upsilon Gallery, New York
June 24 - July 30, 2022

More Information

Sometimes it’s easy to overlook the beauty in simplicity. The way the sun slices bright lines through the treetops on a sunny day or looking out the window of an airplane to peer down at the homes standing like soldiers in neat rows and grids. The lines, colors and shapes that turn the world around us into a masterpiece are rarely given more than a glance, but in a new exhibit at the Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park, these simple phenomena take center stage.

In Line, Color, Shapes, and Other Stories, visitors get the chance to explore the museum’s collection of abstract art spanning from the early 20th century to 2013. The 17 works pulled from the Rollins Museum’s permanent collection all use geometric abstraction to explore the artmaking process. Visitors won’t find any Edgar Degas paintings of ballerinas at the barre or sculptures of Greek gods posing in triumph at this exhibit. In fact, they won’t find any figures at all. Instead, they’ll enter a world dictated by the satisfaction of a straight line, the mingling of shapes and the dueling of colors on canvas, sculptures and prints.

Continue Reading

Line, Color, Shapes, and Other Stories
Abstract Art Selections from the Permanent Collection
January 15 - April 3, 2022

View Exhibition

This exhibition features a selection of works from the museum's collection of modern and contemporary art that explores abstraction as a central theme. Although non-figural, these works contain a multiplicity of stories about art making, each one revealing the artist’s vision, process, experience, and the historical context in which they worked. When considered together, the selection speaks to the heterogeneous approaches to abstraction and their art historical significance. Works by Monir Farmanfarmaian, Carmen Herrera, Doris Leeper, Jakow Telischewski, and Larry Zox, among others, emphasize the universal appeal of the structural elements of representation: line, color, and shape.

The exhibition establishes a dialogue with From Chaos to Order: Greek Geometric Art from the Sol Rabin Collection on view in the adjacent gallery, which examines the idea of geometry and balance as signifiers of beauty and harmony in ancient Greece. Line, Color, Shapes, and Other Stories includes works in various media—paintings, prints, and sculptures; the installation highlights the output of creators who prioritized the non-representational in favor of a pure and direct experience with material and form. This exhibition is organized by the Rollins Museum of Art.

Art Break: Museums of Long Island Are Steeped in History While Capitalizing on Their Picturesque Settings

When people think of Long Island, they tend to think about the outdoors: the beaches, ocean, parks, wineries – even the best mall on the Island is an outdoor one. Not Art Break! When we think of Long Island what springs to mind are the artists’ colonies of the East End and North Fork, the sculpture gardens of Nassau and Suffolk counties, and the community involvement of so many museums.

Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, located on the old Frick estate, is known for specializing in 19th and 20th century American and European art as well as having a beautiful garden, well-marked nature trails, and an excellent sampling of modern sculpture on display. There are two special exhibitions currently on view: True Colors and A Mirror to Nature: Sculpture by Marko Remec (both ongoing).

Following the cancellation of the Brooklyn Heights house tour because the age of ubiquitous social media made homeowners uneasy, the Brooklyn Heights Association is presenting Showhouse at 32 Livingston Street from 11 am – 5 pm every day except Monday through November 5. Last entry is at 4 pm. Showhouse features the work of more than a dozen designers, along with products for the home, wallpaper, furniture, and fixtures, many of them created right here in the borough.

It’s hard to categorize Larry Zox’s painting, though many have tried. In 1965, his work appeared in the exhibition “Shape and Structure,” organized by Frank Stella and Henry Geldzahler, which positioned the artist’s work amid hard-edge Color Field painting and Minimalism. A year later, Lawrence Alloway included Zox’s art in the show “Systemic Painting,” implying the work is best understood as an example of repetition and systemization, then supposedly the new “in” thing. This exhibition at Berry Campbell, however, demonstrated that Zox’s work betrays these categories. The eighteen pieces displayed (four small works on paper, fourteen on canvas) don’t have the reductive look of Minimalism—their colors don’t form a uniform field—and their structures can’t be regarded as systems. The repetitions that occur in them tend to be limited, giving them an odd inconclusiveness, and with that a peculiarly absurd, irksome quality. 

On the occasion of the current Larry Zox exhibition at Berry Campbell gallery in New York City, closing May 26, 2017, the artist's son Alexander Zox submitted this personal essay about his father and his family’s relationship to East Hampton and the East End of Long Island.

Pedestrians walking by Berry Campbell, site of a new exhibition dedicated to Larry Zox (1937-2006), all have the same reaction.

“You look through the window, and it’s like, ‘Wow!’” says Christine A. Berry, co-owner of the gallery on West 24th Street, in Chelsea. “You’re whacked in the face by bold reds, and next to that, you may see a soft seafoam green. It’s a very powerful show, with bold compositions and beautiful colors.”

The vibrant geometric paintings of Larry Zox from the 1960s employ strategies that continue to influence contemporary abstraction. A jazzy, muscular narrative fuels these works. Zox used diagonals to break up languid horizontal elements grounded in landscape.