Chris Succo

Chris Succo’s crisp, cool abstraction is so wide-ranging that, as author Christopher Schreck has noted, a single exhibition could look like a group show. Yet whether the German artist is working in lacquered aluminum and oil on canvas or creating sculpture with steel piping, mesh, or boxing equipment, his work shares certain commonalities: a quest to find individuality within the repetition of forms and techniques, elements of appropriation (including the titles of his series), and a minimalist palette largely comprised of matte black and white. Some of the brighter works in his oeuvre, the “Flag Pieces” consist of three diagonal bands of color and texture created by applying lacquer to black-and-white photographs. In these, Succo divides the canvas in a style reminiscent of Hard-Edged painting, as well as Succo’s own “Nu Era” series of black-and-white lacquered aluminum works.