Ronnie Landfield's Color Field Paintings Reinvigorate Landscape Abstraction at Stephen Haller Gallery

Ronnie Landfield's exhibition 'Structure and Color' at Stephen Haller Gallery from September 8 to October 15, 2011, presented paintings that explicitly reference landscape within the Color Field tradition. Located at 542 West 26th Street in New York City, the show featured works dating from 1997 to 2011, including pieces like Clear as Day (2006), a nine-foot-wide acrylic on canvas that uses stain techniques to evoke light and mist on hills. What Gauguin Said (1998) employs bold, turbulent gestures reminiscent of Post-Impressionism rather than Abstract Expressionism, while Franz Kline in Provincetown (2010) evokes romantic stormy valleys more akin to J.M.W. Turner than Franz Kline. Landfield's approach contrasts with earlier Color Field pioneers like Clyfford Still and Mark Rothko, who were implicitly landscape-like, and later artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Jules Olitski, who embraced romantic associations more openly. The exhibition highlighted Landfield's restrained yet exuberant touch and pictorial intelligence, though some paintings included a trademark solid color bar at the base of the canvas, which the review suggests could appear either as a conceptual device or an affected element. The review notes Landfield never achieves Frankenthaler's sumptuousness or Olitski's fearlessness but maintains a very likeable artistic sensibility.