Casey Kaplan

Garth Weiser
May 11 – June 20
Opening: Monday, May 11, 6 – 8pm

Casey Kaplan is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Garth Weiser.

The painting process involves taking a fluid, viscose substance in transition and manipulating it over time to complete the final phase of stabilization. When a painting is deemed finished, out of its constant state of flux, change is arrested and a perceived stasis results. The concept of stasis, and its impermanence, is at the core of Garth Weiser's new paintings.

Working in layers, Weiser's paintings are born from a myriad of elements that are compressed like stone. They are determined both by organic evolution and decisively skillful preparation, which causes the action, the plane, support and surface to conflate. Movement and expression are here encased and frozen solid, and what was once a quick gesture is fossilized. Even the decorative moves fast forward in time to artifact.

Within this compression and the conflation of time however, the paintings take on a new life. They quietly hum and breathe with a constant visual noise that is only their own. The various actions that individually took place - from intricate striation to broad swath to monochromatic obliteration - each sitting one on top of the next, are now woven together to serve a new purpose for the whole.

Garth Weiser (b. 1979, Helena, MT) works in Brooklyn and Hillsdale, NY. In 2016, Weiser will present a solo exhibition at The Contemporary Austin Art Museum, Austin, TX. Weiser was recently the subject of solo exhibitions at Altman Siegel, San Francisco, (2014); Casey Kaplan, New York, (2013); and White Flag Projects, St. Louis, MO, (2010). His work has additionally been included in numerous group exhibitions: Pattern: Follow the Rules at the Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State University (2013); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (2012); Nothing Beside Remains, curated by Shamim Momin, Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND), Marfa, TX (2011); Seeing is a Kind of Thinking: A Jim Nutt Companion, curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago, IL (2011); and Big New Field: Artists in the Cowboys Stadium Art Program, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX (2010). Weiser’s work is additionally held in the collections of prominent institutions, including San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas; The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Whitworth, University of Manchester, Manchester, England; Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum: Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.