Day and Night, Hour by Hour

Artist Ross Bleckner (American, born 1949)

Date2023

MediumOil on linen

DimensionsUnframed: 60 × 84 × 1 7/8 inches (152.4 × 213.36 × 4.76 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: acquired through the generosity of Gretchen Calhoun and Neil Karbank

Object number2024.8

SignedVerso canvas UL in black marker: "Ross Blecker / Day & Night / hour by hour"

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

Contemporary Art

Terms

DescriptionThis large, horizontally oriented painting features a dark background against which numerous vaguely ovoid-shaped elements in a variety of colors are arrayed. Atop these elements which are rendered in such a manner as to suggest colored lights viewed through haze, there is the suggestion of a black and gray vine-like form in silhouette. Several leaves and what appears to be a few flowers sprout from the vine. This botanical form extends from the lower left of the composition growing upward near the left edge as well as diagonally across the canvas to the upper right corner.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Time Travel: Italian Masters through a Contemporary Lens, Petzel Gallery, New York, November 15 – December 22, 2023.

Gallery Label

"Day and Night, Hour by Hour is a meditation on time,the ephemerality of life, and both the beauty and despair that come from knowing that the people and things you love will eventually be lost and forgotten....

After the Covid pandemic I lost someone very clost to me personally. I spent months immersed in the landscape at my house in the Springs, on Long Island. This painting and others from around the same time are essentially landscape paintings in which elements emerge and fade, come into focus and vanis. In coming to terms with grief it became clear to me that all we can do is be in the present -- day and night, hour by hour." -- Ross Bleckner, January 29, 2024

Provenance

The artist, 2023;

Purchased from Petzel Gallery, New York by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 2024.

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