Contours of Space + Time

All Stars Exhibition Guide

Artists expand our perspectives by offering new visions of the world. They explore ideas related to geometry and physics to convey volume and motion. Universal symbols and shapes are infused with personal memory and experience. From the microscopic to the cosmic, artists in this gallery suggest a spiritual essence that connects us across space and time. This is echoed in the display strategy favored at The Phillips Collection, begun by Duncan Phillips: “I bring together congenial spirits among the artists from different parts of the world and from different periods of time.” (1926)

From left to right, four large vertical stripes are colored light gray, dark gray, medium gray, and light gray. They are made up of small lines alternating between vertical and horizontal. At the very bottom, these lines are blue, red, and yellow.

McArthur Binion
American, born 1946
DNA: Black Painting: 1
2015
Paint stick, graphite pencil, and paper collage on panel
The Phillips Collection
Director’s Discretionary Fund, 2016
© McArthur Binion

McArthur Binion interlaces grid-like images to create dense geometric compositions that address time, labor, and identity. His neatly tiled forms contain collaged reproductions of pages from the artist’s 1970s address book, his birth certificate, and photographs of his childhood home in Macon, Mississippi, to reveal a deeply personal narrative that subverts the entrenched principles of formal, minimalist artmaking. According to Binion, “It was always important to grow abstraction further because it was so narrowly defined.”

A light orange triangular center is defined by sharp and rounded forms, which are varying shades of green and orange. At the bottom, dark green waves crash.

Arthur G. Dove
American, 1880–1946
Golden Storm
1925
Oil and metallic paints on plywood
The Phillips Collection
Acquired 1926

Arthur Dove painted Golden Storm aboard his boat in Huntington Harbor, Long Island. Immersed in this watery environment, Dove captured the immense power of the sea in abstract patterns that evoke nature’s dynamism. Duncan Phillips recognized a spiritual element in this work, stating, “When there is a hint of great things going on in the mind of the artist and of his consciousness of the rhythm of the universe, abstract art ceases to be an amusement for the aesthete and becomes a divine activity.”

Cubic white buildings border a dark blue river, which flows towards the bottom of the composition. To the right and the left, smokestacks are framed against a gray sky and pink moon.

Stefan Hirsch
American, born in Germany, 1899–1964
Mill Town
About 1925
Oil paint on canvas
The Phillips Collection
Acquired 1925
© Estate of Elsa Rogo and Stefan Hirsch

Stefan Hirsch’s paintings of New England’s industrialized communities do not idealize his subjects. Rather, they depict America’s factory towns with a haunting stillness, evocative of a modernity suspended between the rural past and the industrial present. In Mill Town, Hirsch emphasized the melancholy of industrial America by using flat, decorative patterns to depict the river and the buildings and employing expressive brushwork for the sky and setting sun.

A wide, short brown ribbon of wood pops out from the wall. The middle of the object is dark, and both ends are a lighter tan. It appears to have the texture of tree bark.

Leonardo Drew
American, born 1961
Number 220
2017
Wood
The Phillips Collection
The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions
Acquired 2021
© Leonardo Drew

Leonardo Drew transforms newly fabricated objects and materials through processes of oxidation, burning, and decay to reflect on the cyclical nature of time, history, and nature. In Number 220, Drew assembled pieces of wood into a wave. With its richly layered surface, this undulating form seems to pulse with the rhythm of life. As the artist said, “[My work] is a mirror, and you should be able to find yourself in it.”

A light blue circle hovers over three smaller upright oval shapes, which are from left to right white, black, and red. All four shapes pop against a solid rosy, pink background.

Adolph Gottlieb
American, 1903–1974
Equinox
1963
Oil paint on canvas
The Phillips Collection
Acquired 1963
© Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

Equinox features an implied horizontal division of equal parts. Within these two halves, a few shapes, sometimes called “bursts,” float against a field of color, vying for focal supremacy. The title of the work refers to the astronomical event when day and night are of approximately equal duration.

All Stars: American Artists from The Phillips Collection is organized by The Phillips Collection in collaboration with the Denver Art Museum.

Support is provided by the Tom Taplin Jr. and Ted Taplin Endowment, the Birnbaum Social Discourse Project, Ellen and Morris Susman, Lisë Gander and Andy Main, Mike Leprino Family Foundation, the Kristin and Charles Lohmiller Exhibitions Fund, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS Colorado.