#8150 • $2,800 Artist: Wesley Kilmer Title: Summer of 1996, Medium: Oilstick on Paper, 50 x 46"

Part of $2.8 Million McLean Mansion Luxury Downsizing Auction (timed auction by Prime Auction Solutions)

Status: Sold

A significant and collectible work on paper by Wesley Kimler, one of the most critically respected and institutionally recognized painters working in the American abstract tradition today. Kimler is an American artist based in Chicago, Illinois, whose expressive, gestural, hybrid paintings combine abstract and figurative elements in a way that is theatrical and beautiful, sometimes grotesque and surreal, and always powerfully evocative. His work is held in the permanent collections of some of the country's most distinguished institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. This work on paper, titled "Summer of 1996" and dated 1998, is executed in oilstick, a medium that occupies the compelling middle ground between painting and drawing, delivering the rich, saturated color and physical presence of oil paint with the directness and immediacy of mark-making. The composition presents a bold arrangement of large geometric and organic forms in a palette of deep teal and sage green, warm salmon-pink, ochre yellow, charcoal black, and neutral beige, with the forms layered and overlapping in a dynamic spatial dialogue that is characteristic of Kimler's approach to pictorial structure. The work reads as simultaneously architectural and organic, the hard-edged rectangular panels offset by the sweeping curved form at center, creating a tension between order and gesture that runs throughout the artist's body of work. The title, referring to the summer of 1996, and the date of execution in 1998, suggest a work of reflection and recollection, the artist returning two years later to distill an experience or emotional memory into abstract form. This retrospective quality adds a layer of interpretive richness to a composition that is already visually commanding at its scale. The work is presented in a clean black frame with white matting under glass, consistent with gallery presentation standards, and carries provenance from Broadway Gallery, with locations in Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia, a well-regarded regional gallery that represented significant contemporary works in the Northern Virginia market. Wesley Kimler (American, b. 1953). "Summer of 1996." Oilstick on paper. Dated 1998. Framed under glass. Broadway Gallery provenance, Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia. Dimensions: 33.75"W x 36.25"H framed. Original purchase price $2,800.. Frame Size: 50 x 46".