Paul Bloodgood (1960 – May 4, 2018) was an artist and gallery owner who played an iconoclastic role in the New York art world for multiple decades. Bloodgood produced predominantly abstract paintings often relating to the works of earlier artists from

Jackson Pollock Paul Jackson Pollock (; January 28, 1912August 11, 1956) was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his " drip technique" of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a hor ...

Paul Cézanne Paul Cézanne ( , , ; ; 19 January 1839 – 22 October 1906) was a French artist and Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th-century conception of artistic endeavour to a ...

. He co-founded the AC Project Room in Lower Manhattan, and held solo exhibitions in several US cities, including New York, San Francisco, and Washington D.C., and at the Andreas Binder Gallery in Germany. His group exhibitions included shows at the Saatchi Gallery in London. He was a 2009 Guggenheim Fellow.

Life

Paul Bloodgood was born in

Nyack, New York Nyack () is a Village (New York), village located primarily in the Town (New York), town of Orangetown, New York, Orangetown in Rockland County, New York, Rockland County, New York (state), New York, United States. Incorporated in 1872, it retai ...

, and awarded a BA in painting from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1982. He moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

in 1986 and received his MFA from

Maine College of Art Maine College of Art & Design (MECA&D) is a private art school in Portland, Maine. Founded in 1882, Maine College of Art & Design is the oldest arts educational institution in Maine. Roughly 32% of MECA&D students are from Maine. The college is a ...

in 2002. He taught painting at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique in ...

, and the Savannah College of Art, and was a recipient of multiple awards, including the

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative abi ...

in 2009.

Michael Kimmelman Michael Kimmelman (born May 8, 1958) is the architecture critic for ''The New York Times'' and has written about public housing, public space, landscape architecture, community development and equity, infrastructure and urban design. He has report ...

wrote in ''The New York Times'', "Mr. Bloodgood pushes things right to the edge, but not over it. The gestures are dizzying, yet not empty or simply derivative of the Abstract Expressionists whose art he inevitably evokes. There's a genuine and exuberant emotional quality here that suggests Mr. Bloodgood is someone to watch." A 201
Art in America
review of his second solo show at the Newman Popiashvili Gallery described ''Objects in Pieces'' (2011) as having "a sense of being in the thick of things, a zooming in, as opposed to a deliberate fracturing and arranging. The accentuated density of elements and the intensity of this particular painting make it his most accessible and instantly gratifying canvas to date." It explained that Bloodgood had recently suffered a head injury, the result of a 2010 mugging, "leaving him with an optical disorder that prevents him from recognizing a whole object if he sees only parts of it... the artist has since changed his process and is relying on his impairment, rather than collages, to create his fragmentary abstractions." "Standing in front of Bloodgood’s oils," it continued, "one is deeply impressed by the artist’s offbeat perspective and resolute pursuit of his own language." From 1989 to 2001, Bloodgood operated AC Project Room, an independent, artist-run commercial gallery, initially on Renwick Avenue, later moving to Broome Street in SoHo, New York, along with Alissa Friedman and fellow artist

Anne Chu "Anne Chu was born in 1959 in New York City. Her parents came from China, and her father was a mathematics professor at Columbia University. When she was in middle school, her family moved to Westchester County, north of the city. She graduated fr ...

. Together, they organized early, solo exhibits of many important artists' works, including:

Louise Lawler Louise Lawler (born 1947) is a U.S. artist and photographer living in Brooklyn, New York.Louise Lawler ...

Matthew Ritchie Matthew Ritchie (born 1964) is a British artist who currently lives and works in New York City. He attended the Camberwell School of Art from 1983 to 1986. He describes himself as "classically trained" but also points to a minimalist influence. ...

Isa Genzken Isa Genzken (born 27 November 1948) is a German artist who lives and works in Berlin. Her primary media are sculpture and installation, using a wide variety of materials, including concrete, plaster, wood and textile. She also works with photograp ...

Fiona Banner Fiona Banner (born 1966), also known as The Vanity Press is a British artist. Her work encompasses sculpture, drawing, installation and text, and demonstrates a long-standing fascination with the emblem of fighter aircraft and their role within cul ...

Kai Althoff Kai Althoff (born 1966 in Cologne) is a German visual artist and musician. Life and work Kai Althoff was born in Cologne, Germany, in February 1966. He is a multimedia artist and a painter. Borrowing from moments of history, religious iconogra ...

, Verne Dawson,

Doug Aitken Doug Aitken (born 1968) is an American artist. Aitken's body of work ranges from photography, print media, sculpture, and architectural interventions, to narrative films, sound, single and multi-channel video works, installations, and live perf ...

Kiki Smith Kiki Smith (born January 18, 1954) is a West German-born American artist whose work has addressed the themes of sex, birth and regeneration. Her figurative work of the late 1980s and early 1990s confronted subjects such as AIDS and gender, whil ...

, Jane & Louise Wilson, and

Josiah McElheny Josiah McElheny (1966, Boston) is an artist and sculptor, primarily known for his work with glass blowing and assemblages of glass and mirrored glassed objects (see Glass art). He is a 2006 recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program. He liv ...

. For four years in the early 2000s he worked as a colorist, creating a range of paint colours for Martha Stewart and Lowe's Home Centers based on

Paul Klee Paul Klee (; 18 December 1879 – 29 June 1940) was a Swiss-born German artist. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. Klee was a natural draftsman who experimented wi ...

's color theories from his time at the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

. Despite being diagnosed with early onset Alzhiemer's disease following the traumatic 2010 brain injury, Bloodgood continued working in his studio until 2017.

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

2018 Paul Bloodgood, White Columns, New York, NY 2016 Paul Bloodgood, The Art Complex Museum, Duxbury, MA 2013 ''An Inch of Wholeness'', Pei Ling Chan Gallery, Savannah, GA 2012 ''Objects in Pieces'', Newman-Popiashvilli Gallery, New York; Paul Bloodgood, Susanna Hilberry Gallery, Detroit, MI 2010 ''Thing Language'', Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York, NY 1999 AC Project Room, New York, NY 1996 Rena Bransten Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Andreas Binder Gallery, Munich, Germany; ''Jack’s Name Painting'',

303 Gallery 303 Gallery is an art gallery in Manhattan, New York. It was established in 1984 by owner and director Lisa Spellman, described by art critic Jerry Saltz as "one of the greatest New York gallerists of our time". The gallery hosts contemporary works ...

, NY. 1995 Sandra Gering Gallery, NY; An Epic Poem on the History of Industrialization by R. Buckminster Fuller, Gavin Brown's Enterprise, NY; Baumgartner Gallery, Washington D.C. 1994 Baumgartner Gallery, Washington D.C. 1993 ''Paintings and House Poems'', Sandra Gering Gallery, NY 1992 Margulies Taplin Gallery, Boca Raton, FL 1990 ''House Poems from Mab Library'', Daniel Newburg Gallery Project Room, NY; ''Travels from the Notebook'', AC Project Room, NY

Group exhibitions

2014 ''Abstract America Today'', Saatchi Gallery, London 2013 ''Almanac'', Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York 2012 A painting show (in two parts) curated by Michelle Grabner, peregrineprogram, Chicago, IL; ''Loughelton Revisited'', Winkleman Gallery, New York; ''Paint'', Saatchi Gallery, London 2009 Paul Bloodgood, Anne Chu, Walter Keller Gallery, Zurich, Switzerland; ''At Close Range'', Edward Thorp Gallery, New York 2008 ''Peace Among Topographers'', Michel Auder and Paul Bloogood, Newman Popishvili Gallery, New York, NY and Susanne Hilberry Gallery, Ferndale, MI; ''Unrelated'', curated by Matthew Higgs, Wilkinson Gallery, London Paul Bloodgood, Leonard Bullock, Greg Kwiatek, David Zwirner Gallery, NY 2007 ''Looking Back: The White Columns Annual'', selected by Clarissa Dalrymple, White Columns, New York; ''Things From Your Life: An Exhibition in 3 Homes'', curated by Kelly Adams and Paul Bloodgood, Jackson Heights, New York; ''In The Viewing Room'', curated by Lisa Sigal, Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NY ''Jackson'', curated by Barry Rosenberg, University of Connecticut Art Galleries, Stoors, CT 2000 Collaboration with Matthew Higgs, Matthew Higgs, Murray Guy, New York 1998 ''In The Beginning'', Murray Guy, New York New Digs, AC Project Room, New York 1997 Paul Bloodgood/Marybeth Edelson, Art Resources Transfer, New York, NY; ''Shadows'' curated by Suzanne Joelson, E.S. Vandam; Paul Bloodgood, Paula Hayes, Josiah McElheny, Sandra Vallejos, AC Project Room, New York 1996 25th Anniversary, John Weber Gallery, New York; ''Drawings from the Mab Library'', AC Project Room, New York 1995 ''Raw'', Postmasters Gallery, New York; ''Material Abuse'', Trans Hudson Gallery, Jersey City, NJ. Curated by Mark Harris 1994 ''Reveillon ‘94'', Stux Gallery, New York; Sandra Gering Gallery, New York Shouts and Whispers, Venue, Philadelphia, PA 1993 ''Anxious Art'', Bernard Toale Gallery, Boston, MA; ''Jours Tranquille à Clichy'', Paolo Croyannes, Paris, France. Curated by Alain Kirili 1992 Bloodgood, Bullock, Cohen & Kinmont, Sandra Gering Gallery, New York. In 1995 he worked on the Epilepsy Foundation's "Winning Kids" program, helping children with epilepsy create art.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bloodgood, Paul 1960 births 2018 deaths Artists from New York (state) Yale University alumni 20th-century American painters American male painters 21st-century American painters 21st-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists People from Rockland County, New York

Life

Exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

Further reading

References