Late Fall Exhibitions to Feature Ralph Gibson and Charlotte Park
Water Mill, New York, October 21, 2024 – This fall, the Parrish Art Museum will present two significant exhibitions featuring renowned artists Ralph Gibson (American, b. 1939) and Charlotte Park (American, 1918–2010), both with deep ties to the East End of Long Island. Photographer Ralph Gibson, a resident of New York and East Hampton, draws inspiration from the region’s natural and creative environment, which has long nurtured artists who have made significant contributions to the art world at large. Charlotte Park: The Life of Forms in Color exhibition will include over 70 paintings and works on paper. Although often overshadowed by the fame of her husband, James Brooks, Park’s work speaks to the organic beauty of the East End, a recurring theme in her abstract compositions.
Mónica Ramírez-Montagut, Executive Director of the Parrish Art Museum, said, “I’m thrilled that these two exhibitions celebrate artists who have had a profound impact on the East End art community and beyond. Ralph Gibson’s command of photography and his poetic eye for comparative expression, and Charlotte Park’s bold yet delicate contributions to the late 1940s – early 1950s Abstract Expressionist movement are two tremendous contributions to the field of art. They both reflect a deep connection to East End nature and human expression at large. Their art not only demonstrates their mastery but also continues the timeless conversation between art and the world around us, and the relevance of this region.”
Ralph Gibson—Nature : Object features photographs from a series based on the relationship between shapes found in nature and human constructs, positing that nature is visually evident in all genres of industrial design. Architecture is evoked in the correlation between form and ergonomic function. In this exhibition, Gibson highlights the relationship between perspective, color, and proportion. The 35mm Leica format and optical glass are essential components of the work, and the dimensions of the frame are based on the ancient Greek “Golden Mean.”
Ralph Gibson—Nature : Object is organized by Corinne Erni, Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator of Art and Education, with additional support from Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager, and Brianna L. Hernández, Former Assistant Curator.
Exhibition Support
Ralph Gibson—Nature : Object is made possible, in part, thanks to the generous support of Leica Camera USA and Neda Young and Family.
About Ralph Gibson
Ralph Gibson (b. 1939, Hollywood, California) was the son of an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock and, as a young boy, would visit movie sets during filming. He also worked as an extra and acted in bit parts. He was impressed by the power of the camera lens and the intensity of the lights. Gibson studied photography while in the U.S. Navy and later at the San Francisco Art Institute. He worked as an assistant to Dorothea Lange and collaborated with Robert Frank on two films. Gibson has had a lifelong fascination with books and bookmaking; since the 1970 publication of The Somnambulist, his work has been steadily impelled toward the printed page, with at least 40 monographs issued.
Gibson’s photographs are included in more than 180 museum collections around the world and have appeared in hundreds of one-person exhibitions. He has lectured and led workshops in more than 20 countries. In 2010, he collaborated with Lou Reed on the film Red Shirley, which was screened in festivals in Europe and North America. Gibson’s awards include fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as the Leica Medal of Excellence, a Leica Hall of Fame Award, a Lucie Achievement Award, and the Silver Plumb Award. A Commandeur de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, Gibson holds honorary doctorates from Ohio Wesleyan University and the University of Maryland. In 2019, he was elected to the International Photography Hall of Fame. The Gibson | Goeun Museum of Photography which opened in Busan, South Korea in 2022, and houses more than 1,000 original prints, is the most comprehensive collection of the artist’s work in Asia.
Charlotte Park: The Life of Forms in Color is a survey featuring more than 70 paintings and works on paper, drawn exclusively from the 2017 gift of works to the Parrish by the James and Charlotte Brooks Foundation. Park kept a low profile over the course of her career while painting some of the strongest and most brilliantly colored canvases of her time. Color and form, often related to the living environment surrounding the studio she shared with her husband, were strong and constant forces in her work.
Born in Concord, Massachusetts, in 1918, Park studied from 1935 to 1939 at the Yale School of Fine Art. After moving to New York, Brooks and Park soon became part of the circle of Jackson Pollock and his wife, Lee Krasner. They rented a studio space that had been occupied by Pollock and joined Pollock and Krasner, along with other artists working to establish studios on Long Island. They stayed first in Montauk, but after their studio was destroyed by a hurricane in 1954, they moved to a cottage in Springs, East Hampton, which became their full-time residence.
The exhibition follows Park’s abstractions of color and form inspired by organic life from her tentative embraces of color in the early to mid-1950s through her assertive yet playful compositions of the 1980s.
Charlotte Park: The Life of Forms in Color is curated by Klaus Ottmann, Robert Lehman Curator, with additional support from Kaitlin Halloran, Associate Curator and Publications Manager.
Exhibition Support
Charlotte Park: The Life of Forms in Color is made possible thanks to the generous support of the James and Charlotte Brooks Fund.
We are also grateful to Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, for their in-kind support. The Parrish Art Museum’s programs are made possible, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and by the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.
