Franklin Parrasch Gallery is pleased to announce Severely Clear, an exhibition featuring works by Joe Goode and Peter Alexander, 1968-1974.

On view is a monumental Joe Goode “torn cloud” painting:

This work is part of a series of Torn Cloud paintings in which Goode scratched, ripped, and tore away the surface of the canvas. …. The two canvases are held together by a layer of plexiglass that reflects the space of the surrounding gallery and allows the viewer to see his or her image mirrored within the atmosphere of the torn clouds.1

This work was exhibited in Goode’s Vandalism Series show at Nicholas Wilder Gallery, Los Angeles (1974); this is the first time the piece has been shown publicly since it was exhibited that year.

Alexander, a pioneer of the southern Californian “Light and Space” movement, was one of the first to explore the oeuvre of resin sculpture. Drawing inspiration from the expansive skies and sea of Venice Beach and greater Los Angeles, Alexander’s earliest sculptures are three-dimensional geometric distillations of the pigments considered so categorically LA. An early “window” sculpture and contemporaneous wax drawing – a pigment density study of sorts – are included in this exhibition.