Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York Acquired from the above by the present owner
Catalogue Essay
Red Sea, 2006, is an outstanding example from the series of flood paintings by the American artist Barnaby Furnas. Now in mid-career, Furnas has pursued a number of strands in his work, including modernist takes on portraits of historical figures such as Civil War characters, battle scenes and paintings of rock concerts, but it is perhaps for his ‘Flood’ paintings that he is best known and admired. They are made on a monumental scale with a visceral physicality and offer the viewer an intense and immersive experience. Red Sea is typical in its fusion of allegory and abstraction and simultaneously invites and resists explanation. On the one hand, the painting suggests Biblical apocalypse and the Sublime in the manner of European history painting and Romanticism, while on the other it draws on the visual language of Abstract Expressionism. In so doing, it powerfully integrates a religious and historical lineage with direct painterly expression. The duality of instantaneous gestural technique and symbolical meaning lend this powerful work a deeply reflective and contemplative character. Red Sea embodies process becoming form. Furnas pours paint onto the canvas allowing his work to continually seek its own form. Traditional compositional boundaries are broken down; the paint becomes a living entity, its movements and moods dictating the work’s visual outcome. There is an ongoing tension between its fluctuating surface and the enigmatic layers which lie beneath. The tranquil background of the light blue sky is enveloped by a frenzied flood of redness. The rich and vibrant red carries with it associations of passion, rage and blood and engulfs the viewer; the composition shifts and pulsates with an extreme immediacy. As Furnas himself has said when creating this painting, “you pour red paint and have this incredible formalist experience… you’ve got a foot in both worlds. It’s really happening” (in Calvin Tompkins, ‘The Pour’, New Yorker, 13 March 2006).