Thomas Erben is thrilled to present Housing Development: New Paintings and Drawings, Harriet Korman’s sixth exhibition with the gallery, which includes a 2021 solo presentation at Art Basel Miami Beach. Situating this group of new paintings and drawings within Korman’s recent oeuvre, the show’s catalogue also includes examples from Korman’s exhibition Permeable/Resistant (2018) as well as Life Drawing/Figure Painting (2022). The catalogue is accompanied by an essay by John Yau.

Seen together, the three series “demonstrate how one approach can have different underlying ideas”. Korman further elaborates: “In the series Housing Development, I wanted to work with a house form, a form I always liked. I didn’t want to paint pictures of houses, I just wanted to get the feeling of that form in the most non-objective terms – weight, stability and volume. Eventually, a simple grid configuration began to have that feeling, and the series took off with numerous renditions, colors, proportions.”

The new works continue on Korman’s matter-of-fact use of color: usually straight out of the tube to define areas, and eliminating mixed-in white, avoiding any allusion to atmosphere, light or space. Painting’s flat objecthood is acknowledged by dividing the surface into simple geometries, drawn by hand and adjusted attentively, applying several layers of paint to achieve an intensity of color. Developing the series’ chosen configurations – quadrants in 2018, nesting rectangles in 2022 and now structures – Korman initially draws with oilstick on paper, subsequently transforming some of the results to paintings. Though based on the same approach, each body of work is concerned with a different set of formal investigations, which are iterated in the series without being serial.

Over the years, Korman’s work has garnered many notable reviews. Highlighting the artist’s achievements, John Yau wrote in 2021: “Harriet Korman’s career is a benchmark for abstract painting”, adding “By stripping down the paintings to the irreducible elements of line and color, but never settling for a fashionable format …… to deliver them, she attains a singular position as one of New York’s purest abstract painters ……” 

Korman describes her paintings as “things as they are”, a quality which Raphael Rubinstein recognizes, stating “You can only make paintings like Korman’s if you have faith that you can channel visual verities greater than your own individual style.” 

Korman further elaborates in the catalogue: “Today in art things are not fixed, an image or symbol can mean many things. This area of multiplicity interests me. It’s like entering an unknown environment where something new can happen, and for me painting is that place – immersed in the colors and substance of the paint.” 

Harriet Korman (b. 1947) works and resides in New York City. She attended Queens College of the City University of New York and was a full scholarship student at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1968.

Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited since 1970 in the United States and Europe, in such venues as the Guggenheim, NY (1971); Whitney (Whitney Annual 1972 and Biennial 1973, 1995); and MoMA PS1 (2007).

Her work was included in the seminal exhibition High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting 1967-1975, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C.; National Academy Museum, New York; Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; (traveling 2006 – 2008).

Gallery solo shows include: Galerie Ricke, Cologne (1970, 1971, 1972); 112 Greene Street Gallery, NYC (1975); Daniel Weinberg, San Francisco and Los Angeles (1976, 1978, 2002); Galerie m, Bochum (with Frank Stella, 1977); Willard Gallery, NYC (1980, 1983, 1987); Lennon Weinberg, NYC (1992-2014); and Häusler Contemporary, Munich (2015).

Most recently, Korman was included in Painting in New York: 1971–83 at Karma Gallery (book). Since 2018, the artist is represented by Thomas Erben.

Numerous grants and awards have been from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Pollock Krasner Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Public collections include the Guggenheim, NY; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro; Blanton Museum of Art, Austin; Kienzle Art Foundation, Berlin; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; and Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Vaduz.