RUSSELL MALTZ: PAINTED/STACKED/SUSPENDED “MAKING ITSELF”

The Bridgehampton Museum is pleased to present RUSSELL MALTZ: PAINTED/STACKED/SUSPENDED “MAKING ITSELF”, This self-curated exhibition surveys the career of this Brooklyn-born artist who for more than four decades tested the limits of abstract painting as a materially-driven practice. The exhibition opens Saturday, September 26, with a public reception from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Museum’s Tractor Barn.

Based in New York, but a frequent participant in exhibitions on the East End, Maltz has been extensively engaged since the 1980s with the legacies of European Art Concrete and Supports/Surfaces, movements that challenged conventional understandings of paintings and sculptures’ formats. Rooted in a sustained inquiry into the physical properties and associative possibilities of industrial materials—plywood, glass, concrete masonry units, PVC piping—his practice resists easy categorization. His site-specific installations and paintings engage directly with architectural and public spaces, expanding the terms of abstraction beyond its traditional frame. Maltz has said about his process “I explore the temporal aspects of presence rather than the static construct of the specific physical properties of a site. I have found that if I stay out of my own way and truly follow my value for being present, the work follows.”

It is in this way that Maltz continuously challenges the viewer's definition of traditional art by giving the viewer a fresh look at everyday materials.

The Bridgehampton Museum exhibition brings together selected works spanning the artist’s career, offering a rare opportunity to encounter the full arc of Maltz’s formal and conceptual innovations. The survey follows a landmark presentation of his work in Europe: the 2017 retrospective Russell Maltz: Painted – Stacked – Suspended at the Stadtgalerie Saarbrücken in Germany, which was accompanied by a major monograph.

Maltz’s work has been exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States, most recently at The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, Art Cake, Helm Contemporary, Chart, Geary Contemporary and Alex Berns. As well as including exhibitions in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Israel, Mexico and Japan. His most comprehensive exhibition structured as an incremental retrospective presented in five distinct installments at MINUS SPACE, Brooklyn, in 2022. His work is included in the permanent collections of The Brooklyn Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, and the Museum Moderner Kunst in Germany, among others. His exhibitions have been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and The Village Voice.

RUSSELL MALTZ: PAINTED/STACKED/SUSPENDED “MAKING ITSELF” is opening Saturday, September 26th, 5 to 7 pm at  The Tractor Barn, Bridgehampton Museum, 2368 Montauk Highway, Bridgehampton, NY 11932. Tractor Barn museum hours are Thursdays thru Sundays, noon to 5 pm ,  closing  Sat Oct, 31st.