"I only wanted to use what I called industrial materials. They were cheap and could marry the architecture. I wanted to force the paradox between archictecture and impermanence."
Donald Sultan is a leading contemporary artist who first rose to prominence in the late 1970s as part of the “New Image” movement. He is known for his monumental paintings that characteristically employ industrial materials, including tar, spackle, and enamel, to render basic geometric and organic elements with a formal minimalism that is both weighty and structured. As well as for his still-life imagery and his “Disaster” paintings that focused on themes of industry, war, and man-made catastrophes.
Drawing and printmaking have been an important part of Sultan’s practice since the 1970’s. Major print projects include his “Black Lemons” aquatint portfolio, which were printed in 1987 and exhibited at MoMA a year later. In 1999, he collaborated with David Mamet on his book, Bar Mitzvah, for which he did the drawings. In 2002, Sultan was invited to launch the Visiting Artists Programme at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, where he created ambitious woodcut and intaglio prints.
