Intersections: John F. Simon Jr.

Points, Lines, and Colors in Succession by John F. Simon Jr. (b. 1963) is presented in the grand stairwell of the Phillips house, alongside Wassily Kandinsky’s Succession (1935) from the museum’s collection. The new media works—which incorporate drawing, manufactured materials, software, and computer-generated fabrication—are inspired by the river form, as well as Kandinsky’s geometric compositions.

When Simon visited the Phillips in preparation for his Intersections project, he was taken by the Phillips house stairwell. His background in geology led him to connect the space with a river, a form that he associates with the flow of consciousness. ReMapping (2002) alludes to the idea of restructuring the visible into systems of signs and symbols. Endless Bounty (2005), with its constantly-changing-but-never-repeating imagery, is a portrait of Simon’s life in Manhattan and of the city itself: “a river of resources, consumer goods, and idealized landscapes caught in a tension between the desire for comfort and our responsibility to nature.”

Russian artist Wassily Kandinsky has also long been an inspiration for Simon. “My deepest connection to Kandinsky,” he says, “is in working methodology: the balance of intuitive experience and precise analytical research.” This duality is reflected in FlowerHead (2010), a bas-relief painting made out of fiberboard and laser-cut formica and inspired by his daily improvisational drawings he calls “expansions.” Moment of Release (2013), a piece created specifically for Intersections, fuses the robotic elements of his formica pieces with the organic flow of the Phillips stairwell.