Sperone Westwater is pleased to announce an exhibition in its Terrazzo Gallery of four new paintings by Walter Biggs, titled The Spring Suite. For his first one-person exhibition in New York since 1997, the artist will exhibit four large-scale tondos, each measuring 80" in diameter.  Suggestive of natural phenomenon, Biggs’s paintings dazzle the viewer with dramatic spatial and surface effects.  Mixing vast quantities of dry pigments, such as graphite, mica and colored earths with solvent-based mediums, Biggs scrapes, coats and polishes the material until all traces of touch are gone, leaving objects whose appearance is both matter-of-fact and confounding. The resulting artworks mimic precious metal, gaseous and liquid environments and molten rock.

John Yau writes of Biggs’s work in his catalog essay for “Young + Brash + Abstract”, Virginia Commonwealth University, Anderson Gallery, January 2002, “In speaking about his paintings, Pollock declared, ‘I am nature.’  In Biggs’s case, it is as if the painting itself made this declaration.  Although heavily reworked, the surfaces are not painterly.  Rather, they are self-effacing and, paradoxically, in-your-face.”

The four new works offer the viewer an immersive experience.  Imagine the subtle enjoyment of floating on your back in a swimming pool and at the same time discovering yourself floating on your back in the middle of an ocean.