NEW YORK, NY.- D. Wigmore Fine Art Inc. announces its first solo exhibition for Tadasky (b.1935, Tadasuke Kuwayama). Tadasky was a leading American artist in the Museum of Modern Art’s 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye. Tadasky’s vibrant targets were then featured in numerous exhibitions across the United States and Japan for the rest of the 1960s. The gallery exhibition Control + Invention features 30 carefully selected paintings across five decades to show the immense variety Tadasky achieved with his circle compositions through color, line, and texture. Many of the paintings have not been seen since Tadasky’s major retrospective at the Tokyo Gallery in Japan in 1989. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition with a text by Joe Houston, curator of the 2007 exhibition Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s and current curator of the Hallmark Art Collection.

Born in Nagoya, Japan, Tadasky grew up surrounded by skilled craftsmen in his family’s Shinto shrine building factory. As a student studying engineering in Tokyo in the mid-1950s, Tadasky discovered Bauhaus abstraction in American magazines and was particularly drawn to Josef Albers’ Homage to the Square series. Joe Houston writes, “Painting of such deliberate clarity had no parallel in Japan, and yet, its formal rigor resonated with the purity of the Shinto architecture Tadasky had long admired.” Tadasky realized to work in pure abstraction, he would have to move to the United States. He spent several years building up a portfolio. In 1961 he gained admission to Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, but switched his destination to New York where he developed his concentric circle compositions first as a student at the Art Students League and then under the auspices of the Brooklyn Museum School.

Supporting himself with carpentry work, Tadasky came to the attention of Ivan Karp who hired Tadasky to make stretchers for many of the Castelli Gallery artists including Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, and Robert Rauschenberg. Ivan Karp brought Tadasky to the attention of Bill Seitz who was planning a MoMA exhibition of international perceptual abstraction titled The Responsive Eye to open in February of 1965. Tadasky’s concentric targets were selected for the exhibition’s poster. Dealer Sam Kootz gave Tadasky two solo exhibitions in 1965. The first opened in January in advance of the MoMA exhibition and by the second exhibition in October, Kootz had placed Tadasky’s paintings in over 100 important public and private collections. Further exhibitions were held at Fischbach Gallery in 1967 and 1969 and in Japan at the Tokyo Gallery in 1966 and at the Gutai Pinacotheca in 1967. After meteoric success in the 1960s, Tadasky’s opportunities for exhibitions diminished in the 1970s as Op art fell out of favor. Yet, Tadasky continued to work in his studio, first envisioning and then executing his circle paintings for decades. In the 2000s, Op art gained renewed attention as curators saw the continued relevance of perceptual art among today’s artists, who engage viewers through immersive approaches in painting, sculpture, video, and installation. As Joe Houston writes in the catalogue essay, “Such critical attention validates the significance of Op Art as a movement that heralded a profound shift from object to experience, privileging the viewer as an active participant in the aesthetic process.” Tadasky was strongly featured in the Columbus Museum of Art’s 2007 exhibition Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s. Recently Tadasky’s A-101, 1964 in MoMA’s collection was included in the exhibition Dynamo! A Century of Light and Motion in Art, 1913-2013at the Grand Palais in Paris, solidifying Tadasky’s place in the canon of dynamic international abstraction of the last century.

Within the 1960s paintings the gallery exhibition presents differences in movement found in Tadasky’s colorful concentric circles. Those familiar with Tadasky’s Op paintings might be surprised to see the variety in Tadasky’s paintings from 1964-1970. Some paintings spin like B-181 (Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue), 1964 while others pulse with dimensionality like D-127 (Blue), 1967. As early as 1968, Tadasky softened his lines to create volumetric rings that appear weightless, as seen in D-211 (Soft Orange, Yellow, and White), 1968. The next series of works dating from 1969-1971 explores dimension and texture with orb-like circles that give a sense of planets. For Joe Houston, F-132 (Red, Black, Yellow) 1970 calls “to mind the glowing husk of a dying sun.” These works also have an attractive tactile quality as Tadasky used a spray gun set at a very low pressure to create a buildup of spattered paint.

Tadasky’s mid-1970s paintings offer the greatest variety of line in the artist’s career. Perhaps inspired by Tadasky’s work with pottery in the early 1970s, the G series of paintings of 1975-1977 convey the velocity of the potter’s wheel with an outer ring suggestive of torn paper. As the artist works towards the center of the painting, the rings first become soft in color and line before turning into a tight, multicolored core that evokes the 1965 paintings. Four paintings from the G series have been selected for the exhibition, two of which show the artist beginning to consider the square as seen in G-107 (Multicolor Center with Yellow Corners), 1977.

With the 1980s paintings, we see the emergence of the sprayed grid against a rich black background. For Tadasky, the square has always been present as a painting’s square edge is as essential as the central circular form. Donald Judd called Tadasky’s corners “a minor problem” in his 1965 review for Arts Magazine suggesting the paintings should be tondos, but more recently Donald Kuspit identified Tadasky’s use of square canvases allowed his paintings to be “mandalas for modern ‘scientific’ eyes.” In Tadasky’s 1980s paintings the circle and the square gain equal weight within the composition. The grid at the center of J-15 (Blue Squares), 1988 gives structure to the fading rings behind it, introducing planar surfaces that add a new level of dimension and spatial incongruity.

In the 1990s paintings the circle’s edge gains importance again. The globe form of past works is now a glowing central mass whose circular form is only conveyed by its edge. The sprayed red center of each painting set against a black ground conveys pure energy contained by an outline of red or blue. While Tadasky does not see his paintings as referencing anything in the natural world, these paintings may evoke celestial bodies for viewers.

Tadasky takes the viewer deeper into space with the 2000s paintings and achieves a new level of luminosity. The pale blue center of the painting M-221(Small Blue Center with Multicolor), 2008 appears incandescent, accentuated by its glowing white outline. Unlike the fervid 1990s paintings, the M series of the 2000s evokes a sense of calm and wonder. Joe Houston writes that “Tadasky’s canvases have progressively become more uncluttered and expansive, imparting an aura of stillness and quietude.”

Tadasky’s first solo exhibition at D. Wigmore Fine Art - Control + Invention / 1964-2008– was selected to demonstrate the continuity of Tadasky’s art. With inventiveness and elegant execution, Tadasky keeps his timeless circle compositions fresh and energized.