WINONA, Minn. – A 30-piece exhibit by abstract minimalist Ray Kiihne of Winona opens Friday with a reception at the Winona Arts Center and runs through January 29. Reception: 3 to 5 p.m. at the Center, 228 East Fifth Street. Kiihn, age 87, says the exhibit is a retrospective journey look at his 60-year journey as an artist.The works include his trademark bold flat pattern acrylic paintings. The single-color works, he says, investigate the emotional impact of an individual hue. There also are unframed stitched canvases, photographs and encaustics. Gallery hours: from 4 to 7 daily and 1 to 4 Sundays.
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“Plank Pieces I-II.”
No mystery here. When people look at his acrylics and ask“where’s the subject matter?” he responds: “It is light and shadow, pigments, captured movement, and rhythm.”
Kiihne. Sixty years growing as an artist.
Artist profile
Kiihne grew up in northeast Nebraska when there was still native prairie before everything was irrigated and planted to corn. “I had to climb the windmill to get a sense of the landscape pattern. I got a ride in a Piper Cub whenever I could in order to see the larger pattern, to see Jefferson’s grids in the gravel roads and mile lines. The open space of the plains I find calming. And that sense of space and the colors of rainbows that I saw on oiled farmyard puddles have been profound influences on my work.” Kiihne holds degres from Wayne State, Ball State and University of New Mexico. His work has been shown widely at invitational exhibitions. He has visited Brazil, Argentina and Morocco inform his work with new experiences and horizons.