Alex Couwenberg
Works
Biography
- 1967, Upland, CA
Education
1997 MFA, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont, CA
1995 BFA, Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
Awards
2007 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant
He is a Southern California abstract painter deeply influenced by the art and culture of his local community. His artistic influences include the Light and Space Movement, as well as the work of Karl Benjamin, who was Couwenberg’s mentor. Couwenberg’s thin line patterns and choice of color are particularly inspired by surf and skateboard cultures, as well as the custom car and hot rod aesthetic elsewhere known as Finish Fetish. He is best known for combining hard-edge abstraction with gestural brushwork, layering, raw edges, and textured surfaces, thereby bringing depth and an expressionist touch to a tradition of painting known typically for its flatness.
2022
SuperGlide, William Turner Gallery
2019
She Was Blue – Art Project Paia Gallery
11th Annual Silent Art Auction – Kostuik Gallery – Vancouver, BC
LA Painting – Museum of Art & History – Lancaster, CA
Summer Group Show – Bruno David Gallery – St. Louis, MO
90 Years of Ink – Prints from RAM’s Permanent Collection, 1920–2010 – Riverside Art Museum
Paintings from the Interior – UCR Arts Block – Riverside, CA
2018
Jimi Gleason, Alex Couwenberg with Lisa Schulte
2016
Geometrie di luce, Galleria Artesilva, Seregno, Italy
2015
Connect and Collect: ICA’s Annual Art Exhibition and Auction, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)
Mana in Naples, Art 1307 Villa Di Donato, Naples, Italy
Byways, Azusa Pacific University Galleries
LA | SF, Andrea Schwartz Gallery
2014
Permanent Collection, Laguna Art Museum
Halftone, Bruno David Gallery
The Artists of the Film MANA, Lancaster Museum of Art and History
OVERVIEW_2014, Bruno David Gallery
Inform/Form, Launch LA – La Brea
2013
crosscurrent, Andrea Schwartz Gallery
MAS ATTACK 2 – a meet-the-artist evening ONE NIGHT ONLY, Torrance Art Museum
GALLERY ARTISTS, Bruno David Gallery
2012
BLUE – WHITE – RED, Bruno David Gallery
Summer In South Park (Again), Andrea Schwartz Gallery
Smooth Operations: Substance and Surface in Southern California Art, Lancaster Museum of Art and History
Eglash Collection, Lancaster Museum of Art and History
Laguna Art Museum Benefit Auction, Laguna Art Museum
ALEX COUWENBERG & KARL BENJAMIN: Influence, Divergence & the Evolution of an Idea, William Turner Gallery
2011
Beacon Arts Presents TEL-ART-PHONE (Closing), Beacon Arts Building
TeL-ART-PHONE, Beacon Arts Building
Trajectory, David Richard Gallery
OAC’s Art for Awareness Charity Auction, Andi Campognone Projects
New Paintings, Andrea Schwartz Gallery
2010
KARL BENJAMIN: under the influence, Royale Projects
For Roland, 2010 Bunny Gunner
Line, Curve, Form, David Richard Gallery
Claremont Modernism Exhibition, OBJCT Gallery Claremont
New Paintings, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts – NY
2009
Alex Couwenberg: Waimea, Royale Projects
Los Angeles Currents, Couturier Gallery
le petit objet, Royale Projects
Rant, Pacific Design Center
Los Angeles Art Association’s Annual Benefit Auction, Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825
WEST/EAST: contemporary artists from the two coasts, Royale Projects
GEM 2009, Los Angeles Art Association/Gallery 825
Champagne Brunch with artist Alex Couwenberg at new home designed by William Krisel House, Krisel House Palm Springs
A Bit Left of All Right, William Turner Gallery
2008
Bypassing Referents, Kathryn Markel Fine Arts – NY
2007
William Glen Crooks, Alex Couwenberg, Peter Blake Gallery
Off the Grid, William Turner Gallery
Bibliography
Video
ALEX COUWENBERG AND LISA BARTLESON : INFORM/FORM
Film by Eric Minh Swenson. Music by Jon Wheeler.
LAUNCH LA is proud to present Inform/Form, a joint exhibition by Lisa Bartleson and Alex Couwenberg. Inform/Form features two artists, who despite their diverging techniques and motifs are united by their masterful use of color and an appreciation of Southern California’s rich abstract legacy.
Lisa Bartleson’s latest works, part of a series called ‘Gradient’, radiate an infinite and immersive depth. Composed of bio-resin saturated with natural pigments and then poured into forms, these cast pieces display little visual information besides the gradual transition from one shade of color into another. This simplicity however is precisely what makes Bartleson’s new work so memorable. She is the epitome of the Southern Californian ‘Light and Space’ ethos – her works give a sense of light without actual illumination and achieve a kind of depth with color that perspective and other tricks of the trade cannot hope to imitate. For Bartleson these images represent the light she experienced while growing up in Northern Washington, where the atmosphere was often filled with tiny water particles which refracted the sun’s rays to give off blankets of ambient light. Hoping to evoke a similar feeling she created absorptive surfaces that the viewer “looks into rather than through”. The final images are stirring and evocative without being didactic or prohibitive. These gradients could just as easily be a chunk of the planet’s atmosphere or even the progressively darker depths of our oceans – they could be poignant metaphorical devices or maybe – just man-made objects of pigment and resin. Bartleson, in any case, is a generous creator – she invites us to join in the act of creation.
Though Alex Couwenberg shares some of Bartleson’s influences, his paintings also contain traces of the wider cultural phenomena which make up ‘Californian’ identity – things like surfing, skateboarding, as well as West-Coast punk and hot-rods. His geometrical arrangements, built out of layers upon layers of paint, show his appreciation for the hard-edge school of painting and yet also capture some of the essence of the Californian sprawl that surrounds him. The long parallel lines of his surfaces seem like miniature boulevards stretching from the mountains to the sea and his boxy shapes are reminiscent of the utilitarianism found in L.A.’s Art Deco industrial districts. In homage to the ‘Finish Fetish’ movement of the ’60s and ’70s Couwenberg takes a great deal of time to create contrasting textures in his work, from surfaces sanded totally smooth to patches spackled on by pallet knife and run through with a broom to create deep ridges. The unique sense of order and co-relation in his shapes belies the intuitive processes that form them: often beginning only with a color palette in mind, tape is applied over swaths of paint only to be painted over again and again, from orange to black to white and back to black again, until it’s time for layers of tape to be peeled away to expose vivid shapes forms and lines beneath. The works that emerge are striking and full of instantaneous visual appeal.