Blue Ocean Strategy

 

Blue Ocean Strategy (2016) 24 x 24″ acrylic on wood panel

This is one of those elusive and dynamic abstractions that sort of shifts in and out of focus like rolling waves in the ocean, never in the same place twice but occupying a fixed space in the metaphysical realm, meditative and kinetic at the same time.

These pieces are largely inspired and informed by the mechanisms of urban built environments, transportation hubs like airports and freeways, yet also looking at those structures as metaphors for the synapses in the mind, metaphysical forms that are simultaneously fixed and linear while also emergent and biological or organic.

It speaks to my fascination with the object-oriented programming model in which we have embedded our thinking and immersed our experience in the new millennium; scalable, modular, granular, nested and hierarchical, with relationships emerging and synchronized at all levels.

Joe Squared mural painting

Finished this 14 x 12 foot piece at the new Joe Squared restaurant, which will re-open in their new space at the corner of North Avenue and Maryland Avenue around early November!!

work in progress …

Done !!

Homage to Mondrian / Prosthetic Telepathy

Urban Legend #39
Daniel Stuelpnagel
acrylic on canvas [2009]

This 28-inch square is in a way the culmination of my early geometric abstractions, numbering more than 350 paintings in a related style, because I began by working after Mondrian, and this is certainly an effusive homage to his best-known works.

Remarkable for the span of twenty years I took to bring this into focus, and also for the kaleidoscopic deconstruction and reconstruction of the form into numerous small compositions interspersed with ghostly grayscale vignettes.

Many of the adjacent squares are divided by super-fine half-millimeter paint lines resulting from the exceedingly careful application and removal of painter’s tape, a basic compositional tool that was newly available when Mondrian began to make use of it in creating his distinctive works, which have since become ubiquitous designs in everything from wallpaper to shower curtains to the facades of art supply stores.

His originals are mainstays of many museum collections of Modern art, and along with Kandinsky, Severini and a handful of others, Mondrian’s influential works not only form the foundation of 20th-century geometric abstraction, but also, along with the later works of Rauschenberg and Vasarely, provide an early premonition of the internet age through a pixelated grid of insight into the telepathic prosthesis of technology that was to come.

What is also kind of funny is that I raced through this 39th piece in the Urban Legends series without even recognizing it at the time for what it was, a pivotal moment in a twenty-year odyssey, and then continued the series a couple of years ago for another twenty-five pieces before taking a hiatus; so ultimately it was about that quest but the foundational pursuit was such a profoundly fertile source of inspiration and energy that it continued to generate new explorations long past the point of achieving this particular milestone.

Bronze Age / Art Deco

Urban Legend #34
Daniel Stuelpnagel
acrylic on canvas [2009]

This 24-inch square is a cinematic and decorative object as well as a textured color field, the bronze layer provides a warm and mystical counterpoint to the miniature surrealistic quadrangles arrayed in between; perhaps an homage to Frank Stella’s early work.

Dualistic Conundrum

Urban Legend #26     [SOLD]
Daniel Stuelpnagel
acrylic on canvas [2009]

This 32 by 30″ aquatic grid is a mesmerizing architectural dreamscape, somewhat minimal with notes of bronze and gold, the original underpainting was a gestural blue and white study with the immediacy of immersion in the surf.

Urban Architecture

Urban Legend #22
Daniel Stuelpnagel
acrylic on canvas [2009]

This 42-inch square is a spacious and meditative component of the series with a thoughtful and considered color palette and a painterly yet structural compilation of gestures and Modernist grids.

Surf The Tidal Wave

Urban Legend #4
Daniel Stuelpnagel
acrylic on canvas [2007]

This early geometric abstraction is 40 x 30 inches, with an unusual color palette, painterly layers and distinctive vertical orientation.