Home Artists Macyn Bolt

Kooness

Macyn Bolt

1954
United States

8 Works exhibited on Kooness

Current location

Brooklyn, NY

Represented by

Works by Macyn Bolt

01-19

2019

Paintings , Acrylic

41 x 51cm

800,00 €

03-19

2019

Paintings , Acrylic

41 x 51cm

SOLD

09-19

2019

Paintings , Acrylic

41 x 51cm

SOLD

OA 19

2019

Paintings , Acrylic

30.5 x 41cm

700,00 €

OC 19

2019

Paintings , Acrylic

30.5 x 40.6cm

700,00 €

OQ 19

2019

Paintings , Acrylic

30.5 x 40.6cm

700,00 €

skipstep (aa)

2014

Paintings , Acrylic

51 x 46cm

SOLD

skipstep (de)

2015

Paintings , Acrylic

51 x 46cm

2300,00 €

Macyn Bolt is an American abstract painter. Using a visual language informed by geometric abstraction, he creates artworks that examine how color and form create shifts in visual perception.
He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and upstate Pennsylvania.


Education

Bolt graduated with a BFA in 1979 from Calvin College, in Grand Rapids, MI, and earned his Masters of Fine Arts from Syracuse University in 1981.


Technique

Bolt works with acrylic paint on a variety of surfaces including canvas, wood panel, vinyl and paper. Using scrapers and palette knives, he builds up layers of paint, creating surfaces that seem both polished and hand made. He often strives to achieve heightened areas of contrast, exploring relationships between the painterly and the flat, the loose and the opaque. That contrast is further explored in relationships between colors. His process mirrors the balance he seeks between boldness and delicacy in his compositions.

Scale is also an important aspect of his work. His smaller works, which start around 16 x 15 inches, create opportunities for intimate viewer interactions. His larger works, which can range up to 84 x 180 inches, encompass viewers in a contemplative aesthetic space. The differences in size result in a range of perceptual experiences that is integral to the work.


Inspiration

Bolt is inspired by the "visual riddle" that can be evoked by spatial relationships, as well as the interplay between color and form. His reductive, monochromatic work examines both dramatic and nuanced shifts in visual perception. He is interested in what he calls, "the qualities of reflection and mirroring that are unique to the space of abstract painting." His work invites viewers into a contemplative experience as they interact with the fluctuating polarities of concrete and illusionary space.


Relevant Quotes

The gallerist and curator Harry Simon, owner of Simon Gallery in Morristown, New Jersey, wrote about Bolt’s work in 2016, saying:

These paintings represent the new visual foundation that Bolt has employed over the last three years which utilizes a symmetrically divided composition to posit open and closed forms, interlocking shapes and illusionary spaces. In doing so, he affirms the complex, often contradictory, nature of spatial comprehension.”

Timothy Van Laar, artist, critic, author and curator of the “About Painting” exhibition Bolt’s work was included in at the Simone DeSousa Gallery, Detroit, MI in 2016 wrote about Macyn Bolt:

“Macyn Bolt’s Shadow Boxer series investigates the qualities of reflection and mirroring that are unique to the space of abstract painting. These are paintings in which rigorous, reductive imagery shifts between flat and illusory. Anchored within the symmetry of two equal divisions, the crosscurrents of these spatial polarities ricochet off each other to create a subtle equilibrium.”

 


Exhibitions

Macyn Bolt has exhibited in multiple solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States.


Collections

Work by Macyn Bolt is included in many corporate and institutional collections, including those of the Newark Museum, Grand Rapids Art Museum, the Blanton Museum of Art, the Boca Raton Museum of Art, Progressive Companies, the Janet Turner Print Museum, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and TIAA-CREF.

 

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2017

“Twisted Logic- Paintings by Macyn Bolt”, Sussex Community College, Newton, NJ
 “Warm Up, Chill Down, Thaw Out”, DM Contemporary, New York, NY (three Person)

2016

Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ

2014

Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

Simon Gallery, Morristown, NJ

2006

Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

2003

Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

2002

I space, Chicago, IL

2001

Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

1998

Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

1991

Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, NY

1988

Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI

Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, NY

1987

San Antonio Art Institute, San Antonio, TX

1986

Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, NY
 

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2017 

“This Ones for You” summer show, DM Contemporary Gallery, New York, NY

2016

“The Indian Summer Show”, DM Contemporary Gallery, New York, NY

“About Painting”, Simone DeSousa Gallery, Detroit, MI

2015

 “40 - The Anniversary Exhibition “, Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, NY

“The Circle and Square Game”, Strohl Art Center, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY

“The Lightness of Being: Part II”. Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art, Sarasota, FL

“Satellite”, Pop - up exhibit in NYC, Chandra Cerrito Gallery, Oakland, CA

2014

“Sequential Abstraction”, Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

2013

“Constructed Space”, Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY (three person)

2012

Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

2010

Heidi Cho Gallery, New York, NY (two person)

“Stratigraphic”, Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland, CA

Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, MI

2007

“Doupolis”, Chandra Cerrito Contemporary, Oakland, CA

2006

Perimeter Gallery, Chicago, IL

Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art, Sarasota, FL

2005

Flaten Art Museum, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN (two person)

2004

Morgan Lehman Gallery, Lakeville CT

2002

Kim Foster Gallery, New York, NY

2001

Signal 66 Gallery, Washington D.C. (two person )

1996

“Essence” , Radix Gallery, New York, NY

1995

“Under Glass” , Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York, NY

1994

“About Color” , Charles Cowles Gallery, New York, NY

1987

“The Fictional Figure”, Caroline Lee Gallery, Houston, TX

1986

Matthew Scott Gallery, Miami, FL

TEN” , Hal Bromm Gallery, New York, NY

1985

Marianne Deson Gallery, Chicago, IL1

“Stigmata” , Bond Gallery, New York

Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN (three person)

“The 39 th Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Painting” , The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Traveled to: The Mary and Leigh Block Gallery , Northwestern University , Evanston, IL; The Butler Institute of American Art, Youn gstown, OH; Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, OH

1984

Bonnier Gallery, New York, NY

“Totem”, Bonnier Gallery, New York, NY

Michael Hartnett “Abstract Perspective, Macyn Bolt”, Milford Journal, December 2017

Anthony Bannon, The Chautauquan Daily, August 13, 2015

DeWitt Cheng, “Stratigraphic Aggregates”, East Bay Express , October, 2010

Jakki Spear, East Bay Express , December 26, 2007

Matthew Guy Nichols, “Macyn Bolt: Recent Work”, exhibition catalog, Kim Foster Gallery, 2006

Ken J ohnson, New York Times , September 14, 2001

Robert Murdock, Review Magazine , April 1, 1998

Deborah Yellin, ARTnews , September, 1991

William Zimmer, New York Times , December 23, 1990, p.20 WC

Alexander Enders, Art & Antiques , December 1990, p. 38

Eleanor Heartney, “Macyn Bolt: Recent Sculpture and Drawing”, exhibition catalog, Grand Rapids Art Museum, 1988

Tony Towle, Art in America , December, 1987

Dan Goddard, San Antonio Express News , August 9, 1987

Matthew Rose, Arts Magazine , April, 1987

William Zimme r, New York Times , November 7, 1986

Robert Mahoney, Arts Magazine , May, 1986

Matthew Rose, Arts Magazine , February, 1986

David A. Fryxell, “The Ones to Watch”, Ozark Magazine , February, 1985

Mary Roth Riordan, “Macyn Bolt/David Smith - Greenwood”, Detroit Focus Quarterly , March 1985

Lisa Lyons, The 39 th Corcoran Biennial Exhibition of American Painting , exhibition catalogue, 1985

Stephen Kaplan, “Totem” exhibition catalogue, 1984