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Commentary
PUBLISHED REVIEW EXCERPTS "Novak's luminous, nebulous paintings feature soft blooms of pigment burgeoning across the canvas, filling visual space so thoroughly that they erase all sense of depth. One step beyond Rothko's, Novak's paintings gently force the eye to breathe color." Peter Frank, Los Angeles Weekly (reviewing September-November, 2005 solo exhibition at Bert Green Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA) “Joe Novak is an unabashed Color Field painter. His paintings and aquatints at Bert Green Fine Art — the Santa Fe artist's third show there — feature works that will call to mind abstractions as diverse as those by Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko and Morris Louis...The show surveys a dozen canvases from the last 18 years. The most dynamic is 'Libica' (1997), which can be described in two ways. It's either a burst of shimmering golden atmosphere from within a dark amorphous plane or a dark cloud encroaching from the edges to swallow up a field of shifting light. Novak's best works revel in this sort of ambiguity, in which allusions to creation and destruction balance on a knife edge... This is a difficult feat to pull off... 'Libica' is not an illustration of some celestial phenomenon but instead asserts itself as a vivid chromatic form that has found its shape through a combination of natural accident and human intercession....Uncanny... are several beautiful aquatints, made with multiple printing plates that somehow merge atmospheric halations of color in a way that makes each hue distinct, transparent and inseparable from the others — all at once.” Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times (reviewing September–November, 2005 solo exhibition at Bert Green Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA) “ ... Novak's interests are firmly rooted in abstraction and in an exploration of color and light. Using graduated hues that seem to float on the surface, Novak shapes moody, meditative environments. Many of his large acrylics on canvas evoke Rothko's paintings, with their luminosity and softness... Most effective were the big, monochromatic canvases, so finely worked that they resembled black-and-white photographs capturing nuances of light. The expressiveness of these paintings moved the viewer, sometimes with nothing more than a faint shadow, a cosmic blast of purple, or a wispy smokelike tendril of yellow." Dottie Indyke, Art News, February 2005 ( reviewing October, 2004 solo exhibition at EVO Gallery, Santa Fe, NM ) “These works are meticulously constructed, enchantingly colored and surprisingly alluring. Like all the works in this thoughtful exhibition, they're fine meditations on nature, on place and, most of all, on the joys of light.” Margaret Regan, “Variations on Light and Site”, Tucson Weekly (reviewing 2004 solo exhibition at Etherton Gallery, Tucson, AZ) "Joe Novak's dense [fumage] creations . . . bring to mind a graphite maelstrom reminiscent of Vija Celmins' endless wave drawings, and act similarly to seduce the viewer into a hypnotic path to other worlds." Mokha Laget, THE Magazine (reviewing 2003 exhibition titled "Pyro: Burned Melted Smoked" at EVO Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) "While this is a painter utterly at home in color field abstraction, his expressed goals are to body forth things inexpressible, ethereal — to, in the words of Paul Klee, 'make the invisible visible'. In this, Novak's paintings are pools of bottomless Romanticism. " Jan Adlmann, THE Magazine (reviewing 2002 exhibition of paintings at EVO Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) “Joe Novak’s work has a luminous quality that borders on hypnotic.“ “Joe Novak’s abstract paintings focus on color and light as subject matter. His current exhibition features work completed in the past three years, including acrylics on canvas and paper, demonstrating Novak’s ability to create highly luminous images.” San Francisco Chronicle (reviewing 1998 exhibition of paintings at McKesson Plaza, San Francisco, CA) “Novak makes cosmic suggestions. There is a bonafide spiritual quality and inner pulse to his work that grows in intensity and promises to become profound.” Philip Isaacson, Portland Telegram (reviewing 1995 exhibition of works on paper at Davidson & Daughters Contemporary Art, Portland, ME) “’Light Emanations’, an installation by Joe Novak, incorporates a painted canvas, computerized lighting, and electronic music. The experience of seeing a flat acrylic-on-canvas surface come ‘alive’ is, in a word, uncanny. The painting ceases to be a painting in the traditional sense and instead becomes a pulsing window floating in a black velvet void. Part of the artist’s intention in this work is to ‘extend the experience of painting’, and in doing so Novak has created an ever changing painted image-as-luminous-membrane. Strangely enough, the artist's illuminated window gradually begins to feel like a projection from the heart of the viewer's own consciousness. The painting is no longer a painting but a giant eye that allows the viewer to look inside him or herself.” Diane Armitage, THE Magazine (reviewing 1995 exhibition of “Light Emanations" sponsored by Santa Fe Council For The Arts, Santa Fe, NM) “One feels compelled to describe the experience of ‘Light Emanations’ with the hope that others will be persuaded to discover its magic. The work itself seems to be a breathing source of light. The bewitching spectacle induces many viewers to imagine an astounding variety of interchanging images. The ultimate effect is calming, consoling, curative. The artist’s innovative, enticing exercise in illumination raises the viewer’s experience of his work to resplendent new heights.” Daniel Vaillancourt, The Santa Fe New Mexican (reviewing 1995 exhibition of “Light Emanations”, Santa Fe, NM) “Joe Novak’s large painting, rigged with a light that dims and rises on its own initiative, is a gem. Stand in front of it long enough and you will see every color of the spectrum rise and recede on the surface of the canvas. Very subtly hallucinogenic.” Simone Ellis, The Santa Fe New Mexican (reviewing 1991 “Anonymous Bosch” invitational exhibition , Santa Fe, NM) “Novak’s paintings of single color spheres set up an orbit of hypnotic color and and light, vibrating around the space of the painting and the viewer. These paintings compel, with their sheer power of luminescence. There is a kind of cosmic spiritual power in these works. Rose Slivka, The East Hampton Star (reviewing 1988 exhibition of paintings at Vered Gallery, East Hampton, NY) “Joe Novak’s emotional uses of resonating color and light in the form of huge single-color spheres that spill beyond their rectangular formats are easily the most dramatic images here. They draw the viewer with their massive size and startling luminescence,turning into hypnotic, meditative surfaces.” Phyllis Braff, The New York Times (reviewing 1987 invitational exhibition of paintings at Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY) |
