A first visit to Almine Rech during the launch of the inaugural London Gallery Weekend last month in June. I was familiar with Larry Poons' acclaimed hard-edged, geometric abstractions of the 1960s featuring a series of "Dots" and "Lozenges" on a plain, vividly coloured ground. These were possibly my favourites of all the works of his career. However Poons abandoned this method of working in the 1970s in favour of his "Throw" paintings achieved by pouring and splashing paint onto a surface. In the 1990s Poons's work changed yet again as he made "Particle" paintings by building up the picture surface with foam, paper, rubber and rope, and combined these textural elements with his loose, painterly style. For his latest work Poons has again changed direction, taking up the paintbrush once again to pursue a more painterly approach to his art focused primarily on colour, mark-making and texture. It is these latest phases in Poons' work which are presented at Almine Rech. These are large, loosely painted, very colourful paintings on a panoramic, immersive scale, suggestive of landscapes. Interestingly Poons and his wife at one time travelled across the USA to take part in motorcycle races, so the American landscape and these journeys across it may have subconsciously influenced these large series of paintings. Others may be influenced by the light and near tropical landscapes of other US environments such as Arizona, Florida and Utah, areas inhabited by Poons throughout his life and career. With these latest paintings Poons appears to delight in the application of colour to the canvas. Some colours are applied straight from the tube, whilst others are more subtly mixed and applied with a loose, scrubby, brushwork technique. The paint and brushwork on the canvas surface is so densely applied and textural in some of these paintings. The canvases with textural objects applied are a little less successful in my eyes, as they seem less sophisticated in comparison to the canvases composed solely with paint. The loose, bold brushwork and strong colour combinations suggest vegetation and the garden/landscapes of Pierre Bonnard, as well as those equally vast waterlily canvases of Claude Monet at the Orangerie in Paris which verge on the completely abstract. This exhibition afforded me the first chance to experience Poons' work in the physical, and I really enjoyed the visceral sensations evoked in these huge, immersive, pigment-saturated canvases that shimmer with colour and a sense of movement.
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