LACMA acquires Roland Reiss's "Red Edge," 1968
Feb. 10, 2016
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has acquired Roland Reiss's Red Edge, 1968, an early fiberglass and resin optical painting recently exhibited in "Roland Reiss: 1968" at Diane Rosenstein (2015). As new materials became available to artists in the early 60s, Reiss began work with acrylic paints and plastics (notably Plexiglas), foams, and resin. He created "Red Edge" in Boulder, Colorado, as part of a breakthrough series of fiberglass and resin “paintings” in 1968. The molded resin surfaces are textured in positive or negative relief hexagons that Reiss sprayed in bright colors like red, green, and orange. The result is an ever-shifting and vibrational color field. "Red Edge" is among the first sculptural resin "paintings," in synchronicity with both the "Light and Space" and "Finish Fetish" movements in Southern California. This acquisition joins "Philosophical Homilies: Amuse & Amaze," 1976, an early miniature (acquired in 1981) in LACMA's permanent collection. Roland Reiss was also included in "Made In California: Art, Image & Identity 1900 - 2000," organzied by Stephanie Barron in 2001.
Roland Reiss (USA, b. 1929) is widely recognized for his Miniatures, but he is first and foremost a painter. He was included in exhibitions in the early 1960s at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and the San Francisco Museum of Art; the 1975 Whitney Biennial and dOCUMENTA 7 (1982). LACMA included Mr. Reiss in Avant Garde in the '80s (1987). He has received survey exhibitions from the Begovich Gallery at Cal State Fullerton (2014), Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art (2011-2012) and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery (1991). Reiss has continuously received solo and group exhibitions throughout his career, at institutions including the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY (Purchase, NY), Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA), Armory Center for the Arts (Pasadena, CA), San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA), The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), and the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO). His paintings and sculpture are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, CA; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA), among others. Roland Reiss was the Chairman of the Art Department at Claremont Graduate University from 1971- 2000; he has also received four National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artist Fellowships for both painting and sculpture. Roland Reiss lives and works in Los Angeles.
