LOS ANGELES, CA.- Von Lintel Gallery is presenting an exhibition of photograms by German artist Floris Neusüss. This is the artist's second solo presentation with the gallery.

Floris Neusüss began his studies of visual arts as a painter before turning to photography. His series “Körperfotogramme” (whole-body photograms), started him on a lifelong journey of exploring the conceptual, technical and artistic possibilities of camera-less photography.

In 1960, the same year as the “anthropometries” of Yves Klein, Neusüss created his first nude figure photograms, also known as “Nudogramms.” Neusüss was not concerned with using the photogram technique to record a nude form for the sake of documentation but rather to push experimental boundaries of the photogram medium. The works in this exhibition are experiments in photochemical action painting, which show Neusüss’ use of color in unexpected ways with astounding results. Sponges and rags soaked in fixer or developer are applied to the surface of exposed photograms producing painterly gestures, sometimes highlighted by brushstrokes of pigment.

“Neusüss’ images are phantasmagorias rooted in reality: While maintaining the relationship with the external, rationally experienceable reality, he still permits dreamlike objects to create their own reality. By using innovative means, Neusüss creates a new, transcendent referentiality between pictures and reality, as comparable to the spiritualistic photography, thus backing up the doubts about the truth of photography, which have been more and more clearly expressed since the sixties and seventies.” —Jessica Ullrich, Floris Neusüss Körperbilder

Floris Neusüss was born in 1937 in Remscheid Lennep, Germany. He has exhibited internationally in Museums and Galleries for over fifty years. His work is included in numerous public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. He recently retired as Professor in Experimental Photography at the University of Kassel, a post he had held since 1971.

Neusüss lives and works in Kassel, Germany with his partner Renate Heyne.

Von Lintel Gallery is also presenting an exhibition of recent abstract paintings by New York painter John Zinsser. This is the artist’s sixth solo show with the gallery after a twenty-year-plus association that goes back to the gallery’s beginnings in Munich in the early 1990s.

Zinsser is known for bold physical color works that celebrate process and materiality. Archetypal geometric forms invite viewer associations to post-war American painting—abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop. Zinsser’s methods combine the visual DNA of modern masters without being dry, distanced, or overtly appopriational. Rather, they engage the adventure of their own physical making as a kind of dramatic performance.

“Playfulness and improvisation, then, are parts of [Zinsser’s] process but within fairly strict, self-imposed limits. For instance, in most of his work, a layer of brushstrokes or patterning overlies a layer of base color. But for Zinsser, the brushstroke can’t simply be a mark; he understands it and utilizes it as an iconic figure in the history of art.” —Sharon Butler, Studio Visit: John Zinsser, Two Coats of Paint, 2016

John Zinsser was born in New York City in 1961 and studied art, art history and literature at Yale University. He co-founded Journal of Contemporary Art in 1987 and lectures at The New School. He has had over 40 solo shows in the U.S. and Europe, and is known in Europe for his association with monochrome painters of a previous generation. He was represented by Thomas Solomon’s Garage and his work is included in many notable public and private collections such as the Sammlung Goetz, Wadsworth Atheneum and Yale Art Gallery.

The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.