New York, NY — WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC is pleased to present an exhibition of nineteen cast paper artworks and three shaped paintings on canvas and wood by New York artist Charles Hinman (b. 1932). Curated by James Cavello, the exhibition is the first survey in three decades devoted to the cast paper constructions created in the early 1980s. The exhibition will be on view from June 20 through August 2, with the opening reception on Thursday, June 19 from 6 to 8 pm.

By the time Charles Hinman moved to New York City at the age of 23, he had earned a degree in Fine Arts from Syracuse University and had been a pitcher for the Milwaukee Braves. Eager to pursue a career in the arts, Hinman enrolled in the Art Students League, where his peers included Morris Kantor, Jim Rosenquist, and Lee Bontecou. After serving two years in the Army from 1956-58, Hinman returned to New York and moved into Agnes Martin’s former studio, which he shared with James Rosenquist. The studio was located on Coenties Slip, an area on the southern tip of Manhattan, which at the time hosted a community of revolutionary artists including Robert Indiana, Jack Youngerman, Lenore Tawney, Cy Twombly, and Ellsworth Kelly. Entrenched within this vibrant cultural scene, Hinman became a pioneer of the Shaped Canvas and Hard-Edge abstraction movements, exhibiting alongside Shusaku Arakawa, Will Insley, Bob Irwin, Frank Stella, Bob Whitman, and many other minimalist artists.

Hinman’s embrace of color, movement, and sensuousness in his three-dimensional structures distinguished the artist from other Minimalists. Artists like Donald Judd and Robert Morris, for example, preferred an aesthetic of stability, purity, and inertia — qualities Hinman found antithetical to his own ambitions. Hinman soon received critical attention for his paintings as well as early museum acquisitions of his work.

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Charles Hinman (b. 1932) is a New York Minimal painter who pioneered three-dimensional shaped canvas paintings through his innovative use of shadow, light, and shape with complex mathematical formulae. Born and raised in Syracuse, New York, Hinman holds his BFA from Syracuse University and taught at the Arts Student League of New York. In 1965, he joined the growing community of artists on the Bowery and moved into his studio and living space at 231A Bowery in the same building with artists Will Insley, David Diao, Tom Wesselmann, Frances Barth, Harvey Quaytman, and Max Gimblett, where Hinman resided for over fifty years.