EAST HAMPTON, NY.- Chuck Close: Recent Work opened Saturday August 10 and is on view through October 14, 2013 at Guild Hall in East Hampton. The entire museum is dedicated to the exhibition that features approximately 23 new and recent paintings, archival watercolor pigment prints on Hahnemühle rag paper, and jacquard tapestries of artists and friends including Cindy Sherman, Roy Lichtenstein, Lou Reed, Kara Walker, and others. The show featuring works on loan from the artist, Pace gallery, and private collectors is curated by Christina Mossaides Strassfield, Museum Director/Chief Curator at Guild Hall.

In a catalogue for a recent exhibition, Storr stated, “Invention plays a pivotal part in the fundamental dynamics of Close’s work but not in the sense of contriving an unprecedented pictorial or conceptual model. Instead his pragmatism or, better said, innovative empiricism, is aimed at devising previously untested ways of filtering or organizing the data he observes in nature, initially captured photographically, and seeks to transpose by other means onto a two-dimensional surface.

Chuck Close (born 1940, Monroe, Washington) is a visual artist noted for his highly inventive techniques used to paint the human face, and is best known for his large-scale, photo-based portrait paintings. He is also an accomplished printmaker and photographer whose work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in more than 20 countries, including major retrospective exhibitions in New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and most recently at the State Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia. He has also participated in nearly 800 group exhibtions. An award winning artist, Mr. Close was presented with the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in 2000. In 1988 Mr. Close was paralyzed following a rare spinal artery collapse, he continues to paint using a brush-holding device strapped to his wrist and forearm. Mr. Close studied at the University of Washington School of Art (B.A. 1962) and at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture (B.F.A., 1963; M.F.A., 1964), receiving honorary degrees from both of his alma maters as well as 20 additional institutions. Close is a member of the American Academy of the Arts and Letters, has served on the board of many arts organizations and was recently appointed by President Obama to serve on The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. The artist, who painted President Clinton in, 2006, also recently photographed President Obama. He continues to have a home and studio on Long Island at Long Beach.

Chuck Close showed from the late 1960's at the legendary Bykert Gallery represented by East Hampton resident Klaus Kertess and since 1977 has been represented by Pace Gallery with Arne Glimcher of East Hampton and Marc Glimcher of Southampton.