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Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to be participating in PALM SPRINGS FINE ART FAIR

Opening Preview Thursday, February 16
Palm Springs Convention Center

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to present a solo presentation of new works by KIM MACCONNEL

The first annual Palm Springs Fine Art Fair is set to blow the cover off one the country’s best-kept secrets. As one of the premier winter resorts in America, the Palm Springs area is also a sparkling cultural gem—home to a major museum (Palm Springs Art Museum and our Opening Preview beneficiary), thriving gallery scene (60+ galleries), and a strong base of serious collectors and patrons.

Mark Quint stands in Quint Contemporary Art, one of the few San Diego galleries that helped launch the city’s art scene. The painting behind him is a San Diego artist Kim MacConnel. Opposite: Frequent trips to the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego keep Quint abreast of new trends and talent, both locally and nationally. Shown is the museum’s La Jolla location, featuring Nancy Rubin’s Pleasure Point sculpture.

Mark Quint anticipated a short stay when he returned to his hometown of San Diego 30 years ago to try his hand at owning and operating a contemporary art space. “I figured I’d eventually move to New York or Los Angeles to be more immersed in the art world,” he says. “I knew there wasn’t a whole lot going on gallery-wise in San Diego.” So, at a time when merely a handful of exhibition spaces existed in the city, Quint founded his eponymous gallery, now located in La Jolla, showing the works of local artist friends he made during his schooling at the San Francisco Art Institute. Recognition quickly ensued for Quint’s fresh mix of emerging talent and, shortly after, for his efforts to make both national and international artists’ work more accessible to the city—a mission that prompted Quint to develop, along with local collector Michael Krichman, a program that invites artists from around the world to live, work and exhibit in San Diego. “I like to think I’m an artist’s dealer,” he says. “I really listen to the artists about what they want and who they recommend. I think that’s partly why I’ve been so fortunate in my work.”

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to in conjunction with the exhibition of Kim MaConnel’s new work to release the publication KIM MACCONNEL – ABRACADABRA: NEW ABSTRACT ENAMELS.

In the Fall of 2010, Kim MacConnel opened a retrospective of his work at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego – Collection Applied Design: A Kim MacConnel Retrospective. Coinciding with this retrospective was an exhibition of his new work abstract enamel paintings at Quint Contemporary Art, Abracadabra: New Abstract Enamels. This book highlights the exhibition at Quint Contemporary Art. To order your copy see details below.

SAN DIEGO — Ever since Renaissance Venice, painters have traditionally worked by painting on cloth stretched taut over a rectangular frame made from strips of wood. But in the mid-1970s, when some artists and critics were claiming that painting was dead and ripe for burial, Kim MacConnel instead changed the rules of the painting game.

Two unexpected approaches emerged. Using bright acrylics, he painted on salvaged thrift-store furniture — sofas, tufted chairs and chaises. And, in lieu of off-white cotton canvas, he painted on strips of plain or commercially printed fabric, which he sewed together, did not stretch and simply push-pinned to the wall.

So what is the difference between a traditional canvas on rectangular stretchers and upholstery fabric stretched taut over a wooden frame assembled at a factory in the shape of a chair? Or commercial fabric hanging loose and free?

Quint Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the opening of Abracadabra: New Abstract Enamels, an exhibition to run in conjunction with MacConnel’s retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla. The retrospective, Collection Applied Design: A Kim MacConnel Retrospective, is the first for the artist in San Diego. This will be Kim’s eighth exhibition at Quint Contemporary Art. Please join us for an opening reception with the artist on Friday, November 5th from 6 to 8pm.

MacConnel has worked in San Diego for the past 30 years, and has recently retired as a professor of art from UCSD. MacConnel is a seminal figure in the Pattern and Decoration movement of the seventies, but overall MacConnel’s oeuvre has surpassed being categorized. His sensibility and talent has created a unique language using color and composition. He persuades the viewer to appreciate the appeal and conceptual property of patterns and draws inspiration from such wide-ranging and multicultural resources as the textile arts of numerous world regions, found graphic images, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso.

Collection Applied Design: A Kim MacConnel Retrospective is the first full-career retrospective to be presented in San Diego of this influential, San Diego-based artist.

Kim MacConnel is a painter who has engaged questions of abstraction, figuration, and decoration throughout his long career. The artist draws inspiration from a wide range of sources including found graphic images, patterned fabrics, Near Eastern textiles, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and the detritus that washes up on beaches. His work is informed by various experiences of travel, including his study of indigenous cultures and a self-conscious examination of the role of the tourist.