Hard-Edged Boplicity

Local artist/musician/thinker Tony Renner has been busy on the visual-art front lately, showing his paintings at Meshuggah, Starbucks and the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center. And for his next trick, Renner debuts his newest work at Left Bank Books (399 North Euclid Avenue; 314-367-6731 or tonyrenner.blogspot.com) with a free public reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, October 17. St. Louis Hard-Edged Abstraction: 12 Paintings by Tony Renner is stylistically different from his earlier work; as the title of the show implies, these paintings are influenced by the hard-edged abstraction of artists such as Helen Lundberg and Barnett Newman. Further inspired by the idea of self-imposed limitations and repetition, Renner uses only red, white and black vertical stripes arranged as a series of pairs to create these twelve paintings, each of which bears the title of a song from Miles Davis' landmark Birth of the Cool album. The resulting work has a stark, clear sense of color and balance, very much in tune with Davis' album, but still maintaining that Renner sense of spontaneity. St. Louis Hard-Edged Abstraction remains up through Sunday, November 30.
Oct. 17-Nov. 30, 2008