Kenneth Victor Young: Works 1970–1972 at Andrew Kreps Gallery

Andrew Kreps Gallery at 394 Broadway in Chinatown is showing "Works 1970–1972," an exhibition of paintings by Kenneth Victor Young (born 1933 in Louisville, Kentucky; died 2017 in Washington, D.C.). Organized with Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, the show runs through October 31 and concentrates on Young's early-1970s "orb" paintings, a body of work that widened the vocabulary of Color Field painting.

Young studied physics and chemical engineering at the University of Louisville, where he befriended Sam Gilliam, Bob Thompson, and Robert Douglas. He joined Gallery Enterprise, a collective formed to create exhibition opportunities and community for emerging Black artists, and conversations within the local art scene gradually pulled him from science toward painting. After moving to Washington, D.C., in 1964, he met artists linked to the Washington Color School, among them Gene Davis, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland. Like them, he worked on unstretched, unprimed canvas laid on the floor or a slanted surface, letting diluted acrylic soak into the fibers. Young, Gilliam, and Alma Thomas were left out of early accounts of the movement, a result of the period's Civil Rights politics and, for Young and Gilliam, their later arrival in the city.

By the late 1960s Young had arrived at the orb paintings, in which soft-edged organic forms hang in fields of color. The orbs differ in opacity, scale, and density, and their movement and depth reflect his love of jazz, which played constantly in his studio. Repetition and improvisation in his methods, along with the charged compositions, echo the structure of a jazz solo. Their molecular look also recalls his scientific training, suggesting both microscopic and celestial worlds. Over time he added sponges, spray bottles, airbrushes, and conventional brushes, producing haloed objects, plume-like shapes, and blended color. Balancing chance and control, the paintings express his stated wish to find unity within a chaotic existence.

Alongside painting, Young spent more than thirty years as an exhibition designer at the Smithsonian Institution and designed shows abroad for the United States Information Agency. He taught at the Corcoran School of Art from 1973 to 1985, later teaching exhibition design at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. A 1974 solo exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery of Art confirmed his standing among Washington Color School painters. His work is in the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Guggenheim, and the Pérez Art Museum Miami, among other collections. A solo show curated by Sarah Battle is also on view this fall at the Samek Art Museum at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.