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Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new works by San Diego based artist ROBERT IRWIN. This will be Irwin’s first gallery exhibition on the West Coast since his “One Wall Removed” project at the Malinda Wyatt Gallery in Venice, CA (1980). The exhibition, Works in Progress, will change every two weeks during the run of the exhibit from March 19th through May 1st. A reception will be held on Friday, March 19th from 6 to 8 PM.

Robert Irwin as an artist, theoretician, and teacher, has over the last 50 years, played a pivotal role in the development of the unique tenants of Modern Art. Through his own personal Husserlian reduction, his work became the precursor for art outside the frame and object. This includes installation art, light and space art, art in public spaces, site specific art, and what he now terms, conditional art which draws the focus to the relationship and role of the sentient being vis-à-vis the cognitive self.

Maximum minimalism: Icelandic artist Gudmundsson’s striking works at Quint, his first solo exhibition, are striking

By Robert L. Pincus, UNION-TRIBUNE ART CRITIC / BOOKS EDITOR

“I am trying to work within the field of tension that exists between nothing and something.”

— Kristjan Gudmundsson

Perhaps you have never asked yourself: Is there a sophisticated art scene in Iceland? And it would be understandable if you didn’t think there was, since its population is small and it’s remote from art centers like New York or Berlin.

The answer, though, is yes — and, in fact, Kristjan Gudmundsson, a leading Icelandic artist, has exhibited in Berlin, among other places. But it’s unlikely he would have exhibited in San Diego, if not for the interest that Mark Quint has taken in some of the work being made there.

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to exhibit new works by Icelandic artist Kristján Gudmundsson. The exhibition, Paintings in Gray and White Frames, will be on view from February 5 through March 6, 2010. Kristján Gudmundsson’s work is defined by the essential, both in form and concept – working as he describes “within the tension that exists between nothing and something.”

Gudmundsson (born 1941) is an important and central figure of the first generation of Icelandic conceptual art – intelligent, severe, humoristic and poetic. Kristján began his career in the 1960s as a member of SÚM, a group of young artists, many of who were influenced by then-new currents in conceptual and installation art, mainly through the Fluxus movement. His seemingly meandering oeuvre consists of series of works that are surprising in their manifestations and, despite their different appearance, form an uncompromisingly consistent whole that respects the same values. He has masterfully joined Minimalism and Conceptualism.

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to exhibit new paintings by San Diego based artist Kelsey Brookes. The exhibition, BIGGER, BRIGHTER, BOLDER will be on view from November 20th through January 16th, 2010. This will be the artists first solo exhibition with Quint Contemporary Art. An opening reception will be held on Friday, November 20th from 6 to 8 PM and will include musical performances by The Dabbers and Lion Cut.

San Diego based artist, Kelsey Brookes, presents a fresh body of work that displays a strong and unique interplay with figure, abstract forms and text. Brookes’ new work increases the sense of awe and wonder found in his signature style by demonstrating a “loosening” of the figure – where once the female forms had sharply defined contours and rendered details, they are now symbolic canvases for his seemingly limitless constellation of brightly colored micro scenes and characters. The work presents a captivating aura – from afar the small characters, shapes and patterns read as a more or less abstract swirl of color. Up close, the characters engage in all sorts of activity rewarding the careful viewer with a clear sense of joy.

Energy is a kind of tangible intangible in painting. You know it when you feel it.

It’s as crucial to a minimal work, like a Robert Ryman white painting, as to a maximal one, such as a Ryan McGinness image filled with pictographic images and decorative motifs. The manifestations of energy in art are many — from the way a surface shimmers to the way forms relate to one another to the way paint covers a canvas. Art historian B.H. Friedman’s called his biography of Jackson Pollock “Energy Made Visible” for good reason.

So, when an artist’s work seems to possess this ingredient, attention should be paid. And the paintings in San Diego artist Kelsey Brookes’ new exhibition at Quint Contemporary Art fit the bill. “Bigger, Brighter, Bolder” is its title, which seems about right.

La Jolla The instructional drumbeat of this show’s title—“Split, Splice, Splay, Display”—characterizes well the transparency and humor of Roman de Salvo’s best work. It describes in the most abbreviated manner the steps he takes to transform raw material (in this case, wood) into finished sculpture, and delivers the alliterative terms with a showman’s wink. De Salvo has a bit of the carnival barker’s performative flair (“It slices, it dices . . . ”) in addition to the patience and diligence of a fine craftsman.

For each of the six new pieces in this show (all 2008 or ’09), he split and segmented tree branches, recombining them into wall-mounted sections of tracery. The cut sides of the wood face out, and have been sanded so they read as smooth, continuous planes. That continuity is a coy illusion, since the spline joints (slender strips of wood inserted and glued into grooves cut into the ends of both joined pieces) that connect the sections are fully visible, and neither the grain patterns nor the width of the segments matches up precisely. De Salvo flaunts the artifice of his constructions while teasing organic-looking patterns from them. In Filter, Chinese elm branches are made to look like the veins of a giant (36-by-86-inch) double-stemmed leaf. In Delta Tissue, the slim lines of wood define a cluster of irregular rounded shapes suggestive of a cellular network or the residue of an agglomeration of bubbles.