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STEVEN ALEXANDER

Bio

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Steven Alexander is an American artist who makes abstract paintings characterized by luminous color, sensuous surfaces and iconic configurations. For more than forty years, he has been dedicated to exploring the language of abstraction, and its potential for regeneration and historical resonance. Building upon the existential investigations of artists like Mondrian, Morandi, and Rothko, Alexander employs uncomplicated geometric structures that are activated by color. Composed as sensate visual events that embody potential states of being, Alexander's paintings present color situations that mirror the viewer, alluding to rhythms, tensions and dualities of the body and the psyche, inviting meditative encounters with one's perception and imagination.

Born in 1953 in west Texas, Alexander spent his formative years observing and absorbing the vast expanses of the southwest plains. He studied art at Austin College with early mentor Vernon Fisher. Moving to New York in 1975, he completed an MFA in painting at Columbia University, where he studied with Richard Pousette-Dart and Dore Ashton.

Alexander's work is held in private and public collections worldwide, and has been featured in more than one hundred exhibitions, most recently in one-person shows at Spanierman Modern in New York, and David Findlay Jr Gallery in New York, and in numerous solo and group exhibitions and art fairs throughout the US and abroad, including shows in Cologne, Florence, Sao Paulo, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Fe, Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.

An elected member of the American Abstract Artists group (established in 1936), Alexander has been awarded grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Belin Foundation, studio residencies at PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York, the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ireland, and Studio Art Centers International in Italy, as well as numerous public commissions.

Alexander has curated exhibitions and written critical essays about the work of many contemporary artists, including Rebecca Purdum, Gonçalo Ivo, and Theodoros Stamos. Collaborating with renowned Brazilian poet Ledo Ivo, he created the book Mormaço, featuring selected poems by Ivo with 42 works on paper by Alexander. He edited and designed Rooms: PS1, the catalogue for the groundbreaking inaugural exhibition at PS1 Contemporary Arts Center (now MoMA PS1). Serving as PS1 program coordinator in it's first year of existence, he facilitated important projects by Robert Barry, Dan Graham, Elyn Zimmerman, Michael McClard and many others. Alexander also composed, performed and recorded original music, collaborating with John Cale, Arthur Baker, Chandra Oppenheim and others, and performed at Carnegie Hall in "The First Concert of the '80s". He has served as Professor of Visual Arts at Marywood University, and as Visiting Artist at Bowdoin College, Parsons School for Design, and Studio Art Centers International.

He maintains a home and studio with his spouse, artist Laura Duerwald, in the hills of eastern Pennsylvania.