Paul Mogensen

In 1966, Paul Mogensen (born 1941) arrived in New York from Los Angeles and created one of his major works: the 16-part painting Copperopolis. This focused study traces the history of the painting—both its creation and exhibition at the legendary Bykert Gallery—and Mogensen’s complicated relationship with Minimalism.

The latest in Karma's acclaimed series of overviews, this 424-page clothbound volume is the first comprehensive survey of New York–based minimalist painter Paul Mogensen (born 1941). Born in Los Angeles, Mogensen arrived in New York in 1966 already associated with such peers as David Novros and (through Novros) Brice Marden. His first solo exhibition at the Bykert Gallery came the following year. Since that time, Mogensen has created often colorful works that follow rule-based progressions (such as the “n + 1” method) to generate sharply executed geometric abstractions.

In a text for this volume, the artist Lynda Benglis usefully summarizes the special character of Mogensen’s art: “Paul is a colorist who is measured in his method. It may be said that he is a decorative painter as well a painter of a philosophical disposition. He is stringent in his approach, as stringent as a mechanic might be with a Ferrari. There are no accidents.”

Published in conjunction with an exhibition at OV Project in Brussels, this catalog brings together paintings by two influential modern American painters—Paul Mogensen (born 1941) and Steven Parrino (1958–2005)—revealing how, for both artists, structure, material, production and function of the artwork relate to space and spectator.

Paul Mogensen (born 1941) had his first one-person exhibition at the Bykert Gallery, New York, in March 1967. A pioneering minimalist painter, Mogensen worked then—as now—on paintings guided by such ancient mathematical rules as the golden ratio. In early 1968, Mogensen boarded a rivet-plated British passenger ship in Madras (now Chennai), India, which traveled for six days to Penang Island, Malaya, off the west coast of Malaysia. He carried with him a children's notebook in which he drew a few ideas related to what he was seeing on his travels and worked on the arithmetic that continues to inform his paintings. Paul Mogensen: Early 1968 is a facsimile of the workbook from that time. An intimate volume, offering a glimpse of how Mogensen worked out his mathematical imagery in relation to the outside world, this publication is the only book available on this key minimalist artist.