JOSH SPERLING

B. 1984 in Oneonta, NY,
Lives and works in Ithaca, NY

Josh Sperling (B. Oneonta, NY, 1984) draws on the language of minimalist painting from the 1960s and 1970s, primarily working with shaped canvases. He crafts intricate plywood supports over which canvas is stretched and painted in a signature palette of saturated, sometimes clashing colors. In their three-dimensionality, his works blur the lines between painting and sculpture, image and object. Mining a wide range of sources, from design to art history, Sperling crafts a unique visual vocabulary remarkable for its expressive quality and irrepressible energy. 

‘Hailing from Oneonta, New York, Sterling comes from three generations of traditional furniture makers before him, and functional design is a foundation of his practice. Design traditions inform the way he creates, be it Shaker furniture or Memphis-era graphic design and architecture. All of his work is underpinned by complex networks of handmade armatures that enable his paintings to break through the picture plane. Plywood forms have been cut out on a CNC machine and layered flat on top of each other to create a topographic map, which Sperling then stretches canvas over to imbue each shape with a bevelled, faceted effect.

While Sperling’s squiggle works incorporate forms that are ‘very free and gestural in movement’, the more minimal pieces – a single swirl or an interlocking configuration of bubble-like forms – are ‘generally more mathematical in thinking’. While the collage-style composite works have previously tended to be more rigid and geometric, Sperling says that for ‘this show, the composites originated from more gestural, one-line drawings that were started on paper then brought onto the computer’.

Equal parts organic and considered, Sperling’s process is largely guided by intuition. He says, ‘I start off drawing on paper or directly on the computer with a big drawing pad. Everything is designed in black and white lines, with no relation to colour, and then after that’s done, the pieces get cut out with the CNC machine and stretched and then I’ll hand paint a little paper version of [each] to figure out the colours beforehand. I don’t do any colour on the computer, it’s very form-driven at first. After I see the forms, they reveal colours to me. One shape’s feeling could be more intense, so I’ll make it a more warm, hotter, redder colour, while another form could feel very soothing and so a pale blue or something might suit it better. I really have no idea until I put it down on paper and see it with my eyes what’s going to work.’

- Pei-Ru Keh | Wallpaper Magazine

Sperling has been the subject of numerous Solo Exhibitions worldwide: including Perrotin, Tokyo, Japan; Perrotin, Paris, France; Perrotin, New York, NY; Sorry We're Closed, Brussels, Belgium; and Bill Brady, Miami, FL. His work was most recently included in WildMetropolis curated by Xu Zhen at  Powerlong Museum, Shanghai, China. Sperling lives and works in Ithaca, NY.