Robert Mangold

Private Collection, France
Locksley Shea Gallery, Minneapolis
Galerie Bernard Cats, Brussels
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner

Exhibition Catalogue, Wiesbaden, Museum Wiesbaden, Robert Mangold, Spangenberg 1998, p. 196, no. 740

Colour: The colours in the catalogue illustration are fairly accurate, although the right panel tends less towards orange in the original. Condition: This work is in very good condition. There is some very light and unobtrusive wear to the lower left of the left panel. No restoration is apparent when examined under ultraviolet light.
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“I think that paintings are answers. Answers for which no question has been asked.”
ROBERT MANGOLD
quoted in: Richard Shiff, ‘Autonomy, Actuality, Mangold’, in: Richard Shiff, et al., Robert Mangold, London 2000, p. 13

Robert Mangold’s diptych Tilted Gray Ellipse / Brown Frame demonstrates the artist’s refined affinity with juxtaposing contrasts on the level of lines, forms, colours, textures, and atmospheres that go beyond the medium of the canvas by incorporating the work’s surrounding walls. The two distorted and irregular rectangle canvases not only take on a different shape, they also differ drastically in colour and composition. At the same time, the diptych creates a sublime and abstract unity by appropriating the wall into the work’s conceptual approach. Inside and outside are deliberately distorted in Mangold’s work, not only on the level of canvas versus wall but also within the work itself: The pencil-drawn ellipse in the left canvas, which touches upon all four borders of the canvas, and the cut-out distorted rectangle in the right canvas break down each canvas into internal and external spaces. The clear black-primed canvas, which evokes a sense of calm and serenity, is contrasted by the rough and energetic texture of the brown canvas.

Mangold began with the Ellipse / Frame series in 1986 and 1987 starting with single-format works. Experimenting with different textures, forms, and sizes, he then introduced the diptych works in which the ellipse is the only element from the earlier works that is still prevalent in later works. “My paintings […] build from each other, and each represents an attempt to make an individual and collective point. A point that is still somewhat hidden from me and so reachable only by these thrusts of the moment [and] a faith in the process […] Paintings [can double] back, bringing you again into familiar territory. Intervening time, however, has changed things, and the experience becomes something new” (Robert Mangold, ‘Studio Notes’, 10 February and 28 June 1992, in: Christel Sauer and Urs Raussmüller, Robert Mangold, Schaffhausen 1993, pp. 75, 77).