FORT WORTH, TX.- The first Director's Council FOCUS exhibition for the 2013-2014 season features the work of artist Terry Haggerty. The exhibition presents a selection of new works.
Haggerty draws on the vocabulary of abstract art to create his illusory paintings and large-scale wall works. The artist's central motif is created by painting patterned lines that alternate a light and dark color, such as white and blue. When juxtaposed, these colors play off each other, appearing to advance and recede.
Applying multiple coats of paint to his works, the artist creates sleek and fluid surface patterns. He also changes the direction of the uniformly painted lines at certain points - bending them toward the edges of his canvases or walls, for example, and/or changing the course of their paths at the center of his compositions. By manipulating color and line in this way, Haggerty's imagery becomes a study in spatial and sensory perception, appearing to hum and even making his two-dimensional paintings appear to be three-dimensional. This combination of serial color and pattern, along with his redirecting of the lines, has a crucial impact on the overall pictorial appearance of the artist's works. It immediately transforms his simple painted stripes into vibrant and undulating images that seemingly alter the space in and around them.
Terry Haggerty was born in London, England, and studied at the Cheltenham School of Art in Gloucestershire. He currently lives and works in Berlin. Haggerty has exhibited widely at galleries and museums around the world, including the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California; The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut; and PS1, Long Island City, New York. He is the recipient of several awards, including the FOR-SITE Foundation Award (2009), John Anson Kittredge Award (2003), and NatWest Art Prize (1999). He has participated in two artist-in-residency programs, at The MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire (2002) and the International Studio Program for the Arts in Copenhagen (2003). Commissions include wall drawings for AT&T Stadium in Dallas, Munich Re in London, and private collections in the US and Germany.