exhibition installations
Opposite and Alternate
American University Museum, 2013
Washington, DC
Introduction by Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator, American University Museum
I well remember searching out Nan Montgomery’s studio in Eric Rudd’s 52 O Street complex (originally a meatpacking warehouse) located out on the far edge of DC’s downtown in the late 1970s. Inside this interesting neighborhood, I found a recent Yale grad festooned with masking tape and surrounded by extraordinary colorful but minimal abstractions. I immediately showed her work at my gallery, and have been following her artistic trajectory ever since.
Nan has remained true to her initial vision inspired by Josef Albers and the Washington Color School, but her color fields have grown long-stemmed flowers in the interim, and their leaf arrangements inspired the title of Nan’s current exhibition. These are intelligent and beautifully resonant paintings. I must thank Ramon Osuna for helping to make this exhibition possible. It is my great pleasure to present Nan Montgomery: Opposite and Alternate here in the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center.
Nature and Metaphor
Osuna Art, 2008
Bethesda, Maryland
Introduction by Jack Rasmussen, Director and Curator, American University Museum
A show of new work by Nan Montgomery is cause for celebration. We have waited a lifetime for this consummate body of work to appear.
Thirty years ago I was wandering through Eric Rudd’s artistic warren at 52 O Street, in way downtown Washington, DC, and came upon the studio of Nan Montgomery. She invited me in, and I noticed virtually every available surface of her studio was festooned with used, partially painted strips of masking tape. She was making large-scale geometric abstractions at that time, and I immediately fell in love with their unusual combination of intelligent design, finely-nuanced of color, and obsession.
I showed Nan’s work then, and have followed her artistic trajectory ever since. Slowly and deliberately, she has found her own way to a perfect balance between abstraction and representation, hard edges and subtle modeling, intellectual rigor and emotional embrace. Her latest work is all we could wish for: beautiful surfaces and depths of meaning.
It is especially satisfying to see this body of work at the Osuna Gallery, where so many great Washington talents have found their audience.
