Author Description

Fred Gutzeit has never been satisfied with capturing the realism we “see“ in nature. He has continually sought a realism through abstraction to capture the hidden complexity of nature. Using contemporary physics models and speculation about “multiverses” Gutzeit presents us with new visions of space, interaction, and human identity. His use of color and dimensionality are bold and wonderous, providing us with images of deep nature unfolding in space/time. Exceptional art (and the genius behind it) can often provide precursory insights—premonitions, if you will—into the way the world really is structured in contrast to the way it can be perceived. It enables us to “come to know” more than we can see; it enables us to go beyond our “lived” experiences. For example, Seurat’s chromoluminarism and pointillism explored light as photons with a particle/wave duality, causing the viewer to have to make sense of the vibrations of color—a process perhaps now best understood through quantum mechanics. Fred Gutzeit has also never been satisfied with capturing the realism we “see“ in nature. He has continually sought a realism through abstraction that would capture the hidden complexity of nature juxtaposed with a human search for structure. Reading about contemporary physics models, for example string theory and the structuring of space/time into Calabi-Yau Manifolds of folded space, had a dramatic impact on Fred and he began to transform his earlier nature studies into new deep nature explorations making use of folded and unfolded space. There are many stages of his work in this 55-year span retrospective, from early detailed landscapes to wild, vibrating, folded spaces as the artist searches for pattern and structure. “All my life,” he explains, “I’ve worked to see “form” as poetry in my “findings." Lynn Maliszewski in her review of Gutzeit’s work several years ago for The Brooklyn Rail (2014) perhaps said it best, “Gutzeit knows that even abstract renditions