events/Frank Stella
Clinton Plaza (Black Series 1), 1967
Lithograph. Private collection.

Join exhibition curator Lee Plested for a presentation on these early, career making works by Frank Stella and their subsequent realization in the Gemini editioned lithographs featured in the current exhibition. Plested will discuss the historical influences on Stella’s mechanical approach to painting, arguing for the social potential of these otherwise formalist works. The Black Paintings, as they are now known, are often cited as the works that signalled the turn away from the romantic individualism of Abstract Expressionism. Plested will explore the possibilities inherent in this new mode of picture making, how the works were described at that time, and their subsequent contribution to a formalist discussion of art’s potential.

Lee Plested is a Vancouver based curator and writer. Plested has organized numerous exhibitions for galleries across the US and Canada including American Gothic: Regionalist Portraiture from the Collection of UC Davis; Common Threads for the Confederation Centre, PEI and Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Calgary; Material Witness: Mario Garcia Torres and Konrad Wendt for the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, UBC, Vancouver; and Primary Research Lab from the collection of Western Gallery at Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA. His writing has appeared in Canadian Art, Momus, Art 21 and Artforum. Currently, Plested is Director of Griffin Art Projects where he recently curated Lewis Baltz: Portfolios and Civilization (inverted), an extensive exhibition of Canadian painter Paul P, in collaboration with Scrap Metal Gallery, Toronto.