Rex Lau, Abstract Geometric Oil on Wood Panel (2010)

Description The art critic Ronny Cohen once wrote "Rex Lau makes paintings that are what the early 20th-century avant-garde called pure plastic equivalents of the real world. His approach strongly recalls the early Modernist tradition of “abstracting nature,” with particular overtones of Cézanne and the Italian Futurist Giacomo Balla." Lau's more recent paintings from the 2000s constitute another approach to landscape painting more reminiscent of Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley.  This work may have been an extension of his Acqua Pazza (Crazy Water) series, inspired by his life living and sailing in and around Montauk, Long Island.  The catalog published by The Drawing Room gallery in East Hampton contained this passage concerning an exhibit of his paintings from this era: For many, these images may conjure the raked lines of sand surrounding the boulders in Japanese rock gardens. Lau was well into the series before he recognized that the compositions originated in his experience s