Joan Witek

Joan Witek (born in 1943, New York), now lives and work in New York. The artist has explored the complexities, meanings and infinite variety of black color throughout his artistic career, whether in oil, water or pencil painting. Her works focus on specific materials and formalist content, which she distorts by adding a language domain using titles from various sources. Although it appears simple and easily understandable, there is a continuous language of proportion and meaning in this determination to abstraction. Black is usually considered the absence of color: it is strict, strict, associated with death, depression or repression. Witek interprets and works with these oppositions to be black ascetic and seductive, meditative and expressive, flawless but at the same time imperfect, fierce and modest, a presence distinct and unequivocal, but subtle, elusive. His paintings are defined by a radical condensation, and Witek’s potentially infinite suggestion is accomplished using deliberately limited means. Everything creates meaning and intensity for the view.

Recent solo exhibitions include Museum Wilhelm Morgner, Soest, Germany (2021); Minus Space, Brooklyn (2020); Jason McCoy Gallery, New York (’15); Outlet Fine Art, Brooklyn (’14); Kunstmuseum Wilhelm-Morgner-Haus, Soest, Germany (’13); Drawn / Taped / Burned: Abstraction on Paper, Katonah Museum of Art (’11); Black and White, Gallerie Weinberger, Copenhagen, Denmark (’10); Sammlung Schroth, Kloster Wedinghausen, Arnsberg, Germany (’12, ’11), Gallery Niklas von Bartha, London (’09).

Her work can be found in many public collections including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (NY), Arkansas Arts Center (AR), Carnegie Museum of Art (PA), Fogg Art Museum at Harvard (MA), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Museum of Modern Art (NY), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA), and the Yale University Art Gallery (CT) among others.