Roland Kulla at George Billis Gallery

Last weekend, I headed to the Beverly Art Center to pack up the Breaking Criminal Traditions exhibition. The Center is about forty minutes south of the Loop. The traveling exhibition is a composed of work from fifteen artists from around the country… all with content dealing with human rights issues. A new version of the exhibition will be presented this fall at The Art Center in Highland Park. I’ll be posting more on this show later this summer.

Roland Kulla, Queensboro, acrylic on canvas, 60x45"

On the way to Beverly, I stopped by the Back Of The Yards neighborhood to visit Roland Kulla's studio. Roland has been a friend for the last twenty-plus years and he just completed a new series of paintings for a show at the George Billis Gallery in New York. The show opened tonight but I was lucky enough to get a private preview.  

One of the walls in Roland Kulla's studio, displaying, among others, [right] "Brooklyn III", acrylic on canvas, 60x48"

With two pieces sold prior to the show opening, the quality of the work continues to be amazing. Kulla's new body of work plays with compositions ranging from hyper realism to abstraction... well, a version of hyper real/abstraction. The "abstraction" is truly created by the cropping of the image and the final composition. My personal preference leans toward the abstract work, which seems to symbolize the barriers we need to navigate to get through to a "blue sky".

The paintings of Roland Kulla will be on display at the George Billis Gallery through June 21st. The Billis Gallery is located at 525 West 26th Street, Ground Floor [Between 10th and 11th Avenues] New York, NY 10001.
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George Billis Gallery at Art Chicago

April 29 - May 2, 2011, Opening Preview April 28
The Merchandise Mart, 12th Floor

The George Billis Gallery [New York and LA] will be representing my work, this year, at Art Chicago. Art Chicago, the annual international fair of contemporary and modern art, brings together the world's leading emerging and established galleries. Art Chicago offers curators, collectors, artists and art enthusiasts a comprehensive survey of current and historic work, from cutting-edge to modern masters in a wide variety of media including: painting, photography, drawings, prints, sculpture, video and special installations.

The show runs through Monday, May 2. Tickets are valid for Art Chicago, NEXT, and the Merchandise Mart International Antiques Fair. Adults: $20 daily or $25 multi-day pass... Seniors, Students or Groups: $15 multi-day pass, Children 12 and under are free. It's an amazing event... wear comfortable shoes!

Image: Charles Gniech, "Quiet Surface I", 24" x 24", acrylic on canvas
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Roland Kulla ~ "Urban Patterns" acrylic on canvas

This past weekend, I went to New York to attend the opening reception of a painting exhibition by Chicago Artist, Roland Kulla. A long time friend, I've watched Kulla’s imagery evolve from simple graphic elements to obsessively complex patterned structures. For more then a decade, his passion has been the steel structure of bridges. He has found inspiration in the bridges of Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York—creating bodies of work on each subject. This current body of work, titled “Urban Patterns,” is Kulla’s continued exploration of the built environment. The works idealize and celebrate society’s structural accomplishments. Kulla is obsessively passionate of “the monumentality of the forms and the creativity necessary for their existence”.

Roland Kulla’s exhibition will run through April 17th and may be seen at the George Billis Gallery, 555 West 25th Street, New York. If you are unable to see the exhibition in person, you can review the work at: georgebillis.com. Older works can be seen at: rolandkulla.com… Enjoy!


Above: Kulla discusses his work with a patron.

Roland Kulla's, "Meridian"

Roland Kulla is one of fourteen artists to be included in "red" the upcoming National Juried Exhibition at Gallery 180 of The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago. This weekend, I had the opportunity to visit Kulla in his painting studio. His newly constructed light-filled space is stacked with new works-in-progress for an upcoming solo exhibition. But he took some time to have a cup of coffee and talk with me about his work.

A prolific and somewhat obsessive artist, Kulla has been painting bridge imagery since 2000. He began by taking a closer look at the bridges of Chicago and then moved on to imagery based on the structures in Boston, New York and Pittsburgh. The Chicago bridge series, titled "Constructs", focused on tightly cropped design elements, which forced the viewer to explore the individual components of the massive structures. As Kulla explains... "What may appear to be random patterns of bolts and rivets, have a rigidly patterned logic. Stripped of their context, the bridges take on new aspects."


"Meridian"—presenting a similar perspective to the Chicago series—was created while exploring the Boston structures. This was Kulla's first venture into painting bridges outside of the Chicago area. This body of work titled "Elemental Boston", continued to focus on a tightly cropped segment of the structure but now Kulla began to explore basic geometric shapes and a primary palette. Kulla explains...

"I focus on primary elements. At the most obvious level, the images capture a part of a much larger whole. Basic geometric shapes – circles, triangles, squares – are combined in a myriad of configurations. Red, yellow and blue—the primary colors—are featured. Each subject required no more than five or six colors to create very complex images. The play of light and dark, the contrast of surface and void are also key aspects of the work."

Kulla's "Meridian" can be seen—along with the works of thirteen other artists from around the country—at Gallery 180 of The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago from September 14 through November 11. The Reception for "red" will take place on Friday, October 9th from 5:30-7:30. Gallery 180 is located at the corner of Lake and Wabash in Chicago's Loop. The exhibition is free to the public and all works will be available for purchase. Additional work by Roland Kulla can be found at RolandKulla.com. Kulla's work is currently represented in New York at the George Billis Gallery, and in Pittsburgh at the James Gallery.

Image: Roland Kulla, "Meridian" acrylic on canvas, 36x60", $8,500

Roland Kulla ...Wonderfully Obsessive

Generally speaking, I don't have a lot of free time on my hands. But I recently began a 15-week sabbatical from my teaching duties at The Illinois Institute of Art-Chicago, and what I've found is that I'm beginning to "catch up" with all of the things that I would try to accomplish while handling a rather intense schedule. So... I was sitting in front of my laptop trying to identify the next task to be addressed, and I realized that there was nothing immediately pending. Already at my laptop, I decided to spend some time exploring the numerous web sites which I've bookmarked in the past year or so... most of them containing works by artists that I wanted to review. And then I came across the site of an old friend.

I've known Roland Kulla for roughly fifteen years... basically from the beginning of his career as a fine artist. His work is amazing. His passion for the steel structure of a bridge is obvious. On his web site he declares "...I am fascinated by the functional dynamism of the bridge form. On the most fundamental level, the materials are arranged by engineers to get a job done. There is a rigid logic in the arrangement of bolts and girders... But while we use them, we don't usually stop to "see" them. I find beauty in this mundane reality and express it in my work."

Over the years, Kulla's work has become more and more obsessively detailed. His compositions have evolved to include hidden—or at least subtle implications of—secondary content. Kulla's love and passion for painting light, and the way that it changes in the evening sky, is an extra benefit for the viewer. Take a moment to review his web site. And if you have an opportunity to view the work in person, you won't be disappointed. You may be able to see some of these paintings this May at Art Chicago... most likely presented by the George Billis Gallery out of New York. Roland Kulla... Wonderfully Obsessive... And yes, the above image is a painting!

Image: "Riverside Parkway" 60 x 40" Acrylic on Canvas, 2007