This was Eric Sall's first solo exhibition. Abstraction was very prevalent in Kansas City and nationally at this time.
The following was Eric's artist statement for this exhibition:
"The paintings in "More Real than Real" belong to a group of paintings I began working on about a year ago. These are abstract paintings in nature, in that they utilize a language of color, form, line, composition, and surface quality that is characteristic of an "abstract" art dialogue. The images in the paintings, on the contrary, are composed and painted as to be perceived as very tangible objects, as unique things that are believe to really exist. These images are constructed by using a formative approach to imagery common to abstraction, such as stripes, patterns, bold colors, flat forms, and plastic space. A balance is then found between the subjectivity of the actual painting process and the objectivity of rendering a realistic image. I believe the resulting paintings are very realistic. They are beautiful, ugly, masculine, feminine, heroic, infantile, absurd, and honest. Essentially, they are more real than real.
Eric Sall
November 2000"
We will provide more information and images at a future date.
See the link to the Review Magazine exhibition review below. (We will add the second page when we have it).
The second link is to the actual scanned version of the artist statement from that time.