Robert Sagerman

Pouring it On gives us the opportunity to examine how both of these statements from over sixty years ago can, in the context of contemporary painting, coexist rather than contradict one another...Informed by his degrees in Painting, Art History, and Religious Studies, Robert Sagerman discovers the meditative dimensions of emplacing paint on a surface. The strict structure allows profuse paint application and maximum saturation of color. This explosion in front of the surface is excessive, or would be, were it not for his process. Individual color blobs, squeezed onto the surface and terminating in pointy extensions, are almost fluorescent. His work focuses on the materiality of paint with the effect of transcending it and transforming it into a metaphysical event.

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Although color is a subject that is endeared in his heart and he uses up to 200 colors in a painting, colors are not the central thing in Robert Sagerman's paintings. The process is most important and Robert hopes the viewer will look at it long enough to wonder why a painter would use such an intensive technique to create a painting. It's a meditative process.

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Much like most art worth talking about, being in the presence of the new paintings by Robert Sagerman is the only way to really feel their significance. Recently on view at Margaret
Thatcher Projects, the show is fittingly titled "It's Time."

Margaret Thatcher Projects is currently exhibiting the eye popping and mesmerizing works by Robert Sagerman. Sagerman’s work consists of intense sculptural color daubs. He builds
up the lush surfaces by carefully applying thousands of thick strokes of oil paint to the canvas.

According to Margaret Thatcher Projects, “From the beginning of his attraction to abstract painting, an interest in its sensed metaphysical content guided and influenced Robert Sagerman,” who holds a PhD in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University, and whose paintings are on exhibit at the gallery.

The Hunterdon Art Museum is located in a 19th Century stone building that began life as a grist mill. MoMa it’s not—but then MoMA doesn’t have a river and waterfall outside its front door, either. About an hour west of Manhattan in Clinton, New Jersey, this solid, four-story building provides an unlikely but lovely environment for contemporary art, specifically Material Color, the subject of this post. The thick walls and shuttered windows remind you of its former life, as do the wooden floors, massive beams and solid staircases. Looking up you see the remains of what was once a chute that sent materials from one floor to another. Looking out, you see the Raritan river.

Ever wondered how many strokes it takes to make a painting? Ask Robert Sagerman Applying dollops of paint with a palette knife, he keeps track of every color and stroke of each of his dense, multicolored, abstract paintings.

New York-based conceptualist Robert Sagerman is a young artist with degrees in painting, art history and religious studies. Even without understanding his intensely contemplative painting practice, viewers can be hypnotized by his work's vivid iteration of color field painting.