Blinky Palermo

I was recently pointed in the direction of Blinky Palermo by JW Mahoney, who thought that I would enjoy his work because of the titling of his work as well as the geometric approaches of his work. Well when someone is right, they’re right. Palermos work has connected with me in a lot of ways recently. I have been compulsively reading and re-reading the book Palermo which as a catalog of the recent show at Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, this has proven to me to be a gold mine of discussion and thought about an artist who was for the most part, unknown to me. As a cherry on top – I’ve learned quite a bit about artists that I knew a good deal about.

Back to Palermo. Adopted and his name changed to Peter Heisterkamp (1943-1977) he later assumed the name of the American gangster and boxing promoter and became known to the world as Blinky Palermo. The namesake Palermo was famous at the time for “owning” Sonny Liston, who would later be defeated by Cassius Clay (Later to be known as Mohammed Ali)

Probably most famous for his initial works – spare monochromatic “fabric paintings”. These “paintings” would be stitched together and then stretched over a traditional canvas stretcher, where they resonate with the works of Ellsworth Kelly, Brice Marden, Rothko, Albers and Daniel Buren (to name a few) later his work would shift to a triangle motif for a few years and then move into installation type works. One of the most interesting parts of his work was the fact that these installations were subtle and easy to miss, a fact not missed by many looking (and not finding) his work.

What I’m finding most interesting is that his work keeps opening like a flower and is multi-layerd like an onion. His sense of humor is evident in almost all his work in an age where reductivist work was so very earnest, clearly we have an artist who is thinking in ways that not everyone else is, while at the same time covering similar issues in ways not thought of by his contemporaries.

I’m just really getting to know this artist, I suggest you take a look yourself.

The Palermo catalog has a cast of thousands in it as far as the writing and interviews go (27 different artist and writers contributed) is a great read – and frankly less of an exhibition catalog – but all the better for it.

One last quirky note: Did you know that Donald Judd based a portion of his work on the colors of Harley-Davidson motorcycles? Neither did I.