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In a career that spans almost five decades, Jon Groom has steadfastly engaged with the lineage of modern painting while forging his own, deeply personal dialogue with color, form, and space. His work, characterized by a relentless pursuit of abstraction, resonates with the intellectual rigor and transcendental aspirations that defined early modernism. It is fitting, then, that this Survey Show, mounted at PULPO GALLERY in Murnau—a site forever linked to Wassily Kandinsky and the birth of abstraction—should present a comprehensive examination of Groom’s contribution to contemporary art.
At first glance, one might be tempted to draw facile comparisons between Groom’s work and that of his predecessors, from the structured chromatic explorations of Josef Albers to the reductive purity of Barnett Newman. However, Groom’s paintings do not function as postmodern citations or mere exercises in stylistic homage. They constitute, instead, a profound meditation on the role of color in the articulation of human consciousness—a meditation that brings together the intellectual discipline of the geometric and the spiritual dimension of the ineffable.
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YANTRA PAINTINGS
2023 - 2024In the late 2000s, Jon Groom set out to discover India, seeking to visit a foreign country he had never been to before. He had not anticipated that this trip, and the many that followed, would profoundly impact him. This extended time in India opened new avenues for Groom’s work, allowing him to connect the intellectual rigor of his European training with the more intuitive, sensory experiences of Eastern spirituality. The subcontinent's intense colors—its deep blues, vibrant reds, and luminous golds—weren't just absorbed as visual curiosities. For Groom, they became something much deeper: a personal language of color, tied to both intellectual rigor and sensory experience. The YANTRA PAINTINGS channel this connection. In them, color is not merely decorative but acts as a meditative force, transcending the material and entering a realm of pure sensation. Groom’s exploration of India doesn’t read as an appropriation; instead, it's an integration of Eastern spirituality into his artistic vocabulary, where color takes on a spiritual, almost alchemical role.
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[...] Groom's work are "Phainomena". They are artifacts of an essentially non-factual dimension - of what is possible beyond any phenomenological reality. The concept, which sarries spiritual connotations, is related to the term "phainomenon" ("the apparent") as used in Greek philosophy. Originally it only related to what was visible, but was then extended to embrace anything that could be perceived through the senses so as to describe what we could subjectively take in while looking at something. [...]
from "Jon Groom - The Transmission of Color" by Beate Reifenscheid
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BETWEEN THE LIGHT (2003 - 2007)
Solo Show at Museum Ludwig, Koblenz, Germany -
EVIDENCE 1991 - 1994
Solo show Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany[...] Jon Groom uses layer upon layer of paint which results in a density of paint that can be perceived optically. In layers of paint that are not applied uniformly, different hues pervade each other and merge to create an overall expansive effect. Although the colour application is reduced to a level of the greatest possible anonymity, the impression of the work's vitality becomes evident; this corresponds with teh actuality of the reflective metal surfaces. The use of earth-claylike colour from natural sources is transformed into an intensity that does not derive from a subjective statement but from a strength and coherence which is evoked by this particular typoe of colour. [...] As Jon Groom himself says about his work: "The work doesn not necessarily grow out of Art. It grows out of looking at the sky, the land, from music." The tension between their sensual effect and their reduced simplicity produces their meditative Character, made to create order and clarity.
From "Surface : Volume" by Helmut Friedel
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SANDOKAI (2012)
Merging of Difference and Unity -
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SANDOKAI
From west to east, unseen, flowed out the mind of India's greatest Sage and to the source kept true as an unsullied stream is clear. Although by wit and dullness the True Way is varied, yet it has no Patriarch of south or north. Here born we clutch at things and then compound delusion, later on, by following ideals; each sense gate and its object all together enter thus in mutual relations and yet stand apart in a uniqueness of their own, depending and yet non-depending both. In form and feel component things are seen to differ deeply; thus are voices, in inherent isolation, soft or harsh. Such words as high and middle darkness match; Light separates the murky from the pure. The properties of the four elements together draw just as a child returns unto its mother.
Lo! The heat of fire, the moving wind, the water wet, the earth all solid. Eyes to see, sounds heard and smells; upon the tongue the sour, salty taste. And yet, in each related thing, as leaves grow from the roots, end and beginning here return unto the source and "high" and "low" are used respectively. Within all light is darkness but explained it cannot be by darkness that one-sided is alone. Light goes with darkness as the sequence does of steps in walking; all things have inherent, great potentiality, both function, rest, reside within.
Lo! With the ideal comes the actual, like a box all with its lid.
Lo! With the ideal comes the actual, like two arrows in mid-air that meet.
Completely understand herein the basic Truth within these words;
Lo! Hear! Set up not your own standards.
If, from your experience of the senses, basic Truth you do not know, how can you ever find the path that certain is, no matter how far distant you may walk? As you walk on distinctions between near and far are lost and, should you lost become, there will arise obstructing mountains and great rivers. This I offer to the seeker of great Truth,
Do not waste time.
Translation by Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett
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SILVER PAINTING 2016
ECHO, 2016Silver in beeswax and damar on acrylic on canvas over wooden panel
190 x 180 x 7 cm
74 3/4 x 70 7/8 x 2 3/4 in -
The Metaphysics of Light
Newman, Martin, and the UnseenJon Groom’s understanding of color is inextricably linked to light, a preoccupation that aligns him with Barnett Newman and Agnes Martin, two artists who sought, in their own ways, to make the invisible visible. Newman’s vast fields of color and his insistence on the sublime in art resonate with Groom’s belief in painting as a medium for profound experience. In Groom’s work, however, the sublime is not an abstract idea imposed upon the viewer; it is something that emerges slowly, almost imperceptibly, through the act of looking.
His paintings demand time. They do not yield their meaning to the impatient viewer. Instead, like Martin’s delicate grids, they unfold over time, revealing layers of meaning that oscillate between presence and absence. The viewer is invited into a meditative space, one where the boundaries between the self and the painting blur, and where the act of perception becomes an act of introspection.
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"WORKS OF ART ARE NOT PURPOSELY CONCEIVED.THE RESPONSE DEPENDS UPON THE CONDITION OF THE OBSERVER."Agnes Martin, 1993
THE SURVEY SHOW | Jon Groom
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