n+1: Paul Mogensen

 

Although working spontaneously, Mogensen nevertheless operates within a set of parameters: hard edges, a minimal palette, and predetermined logic. He never plans his works on paper, electing instead to compose directly on the canvas, explaining that “once you decide on the arithmetic and then you just make it, [the work] makes itself.” From this imperative, he has sustained decades of experimentation. In Mogensen’s practice, the ever-advancing, ever-diminishing progressional sequences of arithmetic and geometry is laid bare. Along with brushes, paint, and Stand oil, he works with the infinite, creating paintings in which order becomes elegance. 

 

Paul Mogensen (b. 1941, Los Angeles) is a New York–based painter. In the late 1960s, he began exhibiting at Bykert Gallery in New York, where he was affiliated with other artists exploring arithmetic, minimal compositions, and serialities such as David Novros and Brice Marden. Distinct series can be identified within Mogensen’s practice, such as wall-based works consisting of multiple sections, shaped canvases, spectrum paintings, spirals, and the formulaic compositions of squares on single canvases. The resultant Morse code–like arrays call to mind the Universalist ideas of early twentieth-century Russian artists and poets admired by Mogensen such as Vladimir Mayakovsky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Vladimir Tatlin.

 

Mogensen’s work is represented in the collections of major museums in the United States and internationally, including at Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, MA, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, The Menil Collection, Houston, TX, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX and the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY.