“Lineal Pathways” features paintings from Stanczak’s “Crest” series, which are very different from his “See Through” series and “Grid” paintings. The “Crest” series is less geometric, more organic, and continues explorations Stanczak began in the 1960s. These paintings are created with many fine parallel lines that run from one edge of the canvas to the other with points of constriction that cause either subtle or immediate directional shifts. The effect is a topographical illusion, a ghostly blanketing of underlying objects and hills. The parallel lines with their subtle undulations and shifts create equally potent color effects. Many of the paintings alter spatial relationships and depth perception as seen through color. The reduced palette in these paintings is powerful because the adjacency of the lines and alternating colors creates an almost third color and/or monochrome effect in many of the artworks.

Stanczak, a student of Josef Albers, exploits his knowledge of colors not operating independently, but instead, interacting in concert with and perceived in relationship to neighboring colors. His focusing on color and using it to create the illusion of other colors makes the “experience” of color more important than the actual lines or geometric shapes used to contain it.

Julian Stanczak’s impressive career includes over 90 solo exhibitions in New York, Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Cincinnati, Houston, Los Angeles, London, England, Tokyo, Japan, Warsaw, Poland and Ontario, Canada, among other cities. His artwork has been featured in numerous national and international group shows such as the seminal exhibitions in 1965 that established the perceptual art movement, Vibrations Eleven, at the Martha Jackson Gallery, New York and The Responsive Eye, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Stanczak’s artwork is included in the permanent collections of approximately 80 museums, among them, Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo), Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Museum of Modern Art (New York), National Gallery of Art and Sculpture Garden (Washington, D.C.), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, D.C.) and Victoria and Albert Museum (London, England). His artwork is also featured in many important public and private collections. Julian Stanczak was born in Borownica, Poland and now lives and works in Seven Hills, Ohio.