Matthew Marks is pleased to announce Ellsworth Kelly: Black and White, the next exhibition in his gallery at 523 West 24th Street. The exhibition includes nine paintings and sculptures made between 1953 and 2012.

Ellsworth Kelly described black and white as “the complete absence of color and the totality of light,” the contrast of which allowed for a pure investigation of form.

The earliest work in the exhibition, White, Two Blacks (1953), is an example of the artist’s multi-panel paintings in which monochrome canvases are joined end to end. Another work on view, Study for Atlantic (1956), inspired by the shadows cast across pages of a book Kelly was reading while riding on a bus, is composed of two canvases each of which depict a white form against a black ground. Other works in the exhibition include shaped canvases and relief paintings, created by superimposing one canvas on top of another, and sculptures in bronze and aluminum. The latest work in the exhibition, a painted aluminum relief from 2012, has a reflective white surface in contrast to the matte canvases of the paintings. Together these works reflect Kelly’s rigorous, lifelong investigation of line, form, and color.