Igshaan Adams’ (b. 1982, Cape Town, South Africa) multi-disciplinary practice is an ongoing examination of hybrid identity, exploring notions of race, religion, and generational trauma. Adams combines weaving, performance, and installation in an intersection of personal history and his native Cape Town roots.
Raised in Bonteheuwel, a former Cape Coloured township in Cape Town created during apartheid, the race-based legislation of the 1950s, Adams reshapes materials representative of his lineage - sourcing rope, cotton, beads, prayer rugs, garden fencing wire, and remnants of linoleum flooring found in the homes of working class, mixed-race, and black communities.
Adams presents “Blou Verligt (Blue illuminated)” (2020), part of a recent group of tapestries, heavily embellished two-dimensional wall wearings that map and display the repetitive underfoot movements of daily life. Through a labor-intensive process, Adams reshapes materials representative of his lineage. Using remnants of patterned linoleum flooring excavated from the homes of working class, mixed-race, and black communities living in former Cape Town townships, Adams creates a template to weave a tapestry of colorful beading, rope, twine, wire, chain, and fabric that maps and articulates the evidence of human activity, household furnishings, along with decay, wear, and time.
“Blou Verligt” has the appearance of an abstract expressionist painting, resembling a work by Clyfford Still from the 1950s. Within this weaving, Adams articulates the existing geometric pattern found on the removed linoleum flooring by rendering it in fine silver chain surrounded by a field of white beads dotted in bright colors. He then makes the floor’s scuffs and wear visible as large, jagged, abstract shapes through the use of pale blue colored fabrics with black and charcoal beads.
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Igshaan Adams
Blou Verligt (Blue Illuminated), 2020
Wood, stone and plastic beads, metal, chain, rope and string
108.6 x 76.3"/ 276 x 194cm
IA2020-011
“The Shadow” (2020) is part of a recent series of elevated ‘slabs’ by Kevin Beasley (b. 1985, Lynchburg, VA), primarily comprised of raw and hand-dyed Virginia cotton (harvested from his father’s ancestral property in Valentines, VA), as well as cut-up garments and gold powder set in polyurethane resin. The cotton and the clothing have been altered and manipulated. Then, they are ultimately cast and molded to form a body of wall-mounted artworks.
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Kevin Beasley
The Shadow, 2020
Polyurethane resin, epoxy resin, raw Virginia cotton, altered t-shirts, altered housedresses, housedress, gold powder, carbon fiber
83.5 x 92.5" / 212.09 x 234.95cm
KB2020-085
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Beasley is continually considering his own place within the history of his family’s Virginia property, and more generally within the context of black land ownership in the American South. With an indelible connection to the land where generations of his family have gathered, Beasley sources materials of cultural and personal significance for use in his multi-media practice.
Originally conceived in 2017, Beasley’s ‘slabs’ began as large-scale square and rectangular sculptural structures often resting on the floor, and flush to the wall. They can be seen as the artist’s reflection upon ancient stone relief sculptures, specifically 9th c. BCE Assyrian reliefs that depict battle or courtly scenes and religious rituals in rich detail and highly schematic imagery. However, pictorial narrative has now been replaced by abstraction within the context of the production of cotton, where culturally-inspired materials exist within abstract fields of color and texture. They offer impressions of contemporary life through compositions comprising a mixing of personal articles of clothing with vibrantly colored and patterned housedresses, purchased from a former Harlem dress shop that was frequented for decades by Beasley’s grandmother and great-grandmother. These various garments have been cut into strips and presented within a colorful field of bundles of cotton.
In "The Shadow," a horizon line divides the composition. A floral-patterned housedress is splayed across and inset in a field of raw cotton. As if ascending from below, a shadow-like form emerges beneath the surface in the sky above, binding foreground and background. Beasley’s ‘slabs’ are landscapes, but they also draw on a sculptural tradition in which the body is a primary artistic preoccupation, while enshrining the shared, cultural narratives embedded in clothing by the bodies that wear them. These complex and layered histories are not just subject matter to investigate for Beasley, they are woven into life, surrounded by family, and steeped in generational memory.
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"Jackie, Dinner" (2020) offers a glimpse into the former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, through a collection of items rendered in Matthew Brannon’s (b. 1971, St. Maries, ID) signature graphic style. In continuation of his “First Lady” silkscreen series, the artist returns to focus on the years of the Vietnam/American War as a point of reflection.
With traditional silkscreen printing techniques as well as hand-painting, the artist layers hundreds of screens in an intricate network of overlapping and boldly colored objects. Image and language intersect in evocations of dual meanings and underlying narrative. Immersed in rigorous historical research, Brannon explores the psychological and cultural implications of the time period through a collection of “First Lady” vignettes.
In "Jackie, Dinner,” a portrait of the First Lady remains conspicuously absent. Detailed renderings of historically significant objects are set against a gesturally painted cobalt blue backdrop where a personal narrative unfolds. A contemplative black and white photograph of President John F. Kennedy, shot in 1960 on Coos Bay, Oregon by Jacques Lowe (Kennedy’s official photographer during the election campaign and the Presidency) hovers ominously above a still life of referential objects including: a riding helmet, a bottle of champagne, a crystal glass, a menu, a jar of face cream, and a business card assembled together on the corner of a round table decorated in a gridded tablecloth.
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Matthew Brannon
Jackie, Dinner, 2020
Silkscreen and hand painted elements on paper
32.5 x 28" / 82.55 x 71.12cm
MB2020-003
The riding helmet is a reference to the First Lady’s equestrian pastime. It partially obscures a bottle of 1955 Mumm Cordon Rouge champagne and a menu for an official, formal “state dinner" (alluding to the First Lady’s influential role in the President's social calendar). Pond’s Cold Cream was a staple of the First Lady’s skincare regimen. Sister Parish was an American interior decorator and socialite who was the first practitioner brought in by Jackie to redecorate the Kennedy White House. That position was later usurped by the French interior decorator Stéphane Boudin. Despite Boudin's stylistic differences, Parish's influence is still visible at the White House today, particularly in the Yellow Oval Room.
Nathan Carter’s (b. 1970, Dallas, TX) practice engages with sculpture, collage, drawing, and stop-motion animation as manifestations of conjured universes, vacillating between our shared realities and the far-fetched future.
Generated through impulse and fantasy, Carter parallels the energy of his subjects in a fantastical cornucopia of color, form, and gesture.
In recent years, Carter’s practice has revolved around the unlikely and enlarged manifestations of fanciful objects in the form of aluminum wall-based relief sculptures. Termed ‘fascinators’, this diverse body of work was inspired, in large-part, by the decorative headpieces of the same name. Carter expands on and transforms the visual language of the fascinators into boldly colored and gold-painted forms that billow across aluminum panels, growing fluidly from one shape into the next in a cross between carnal and botanical. Leaves and vines painted in shades of magenta and verdant greens weave in and out of sweeping pale pink and gold forms amid accents of blue, yellow, and orange leaves.
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Nathan Carter
Panromantic Portia Reciprosexual Regis, 2020
Acrylic on Alumicore
44 x 28"/ 111.16 x 71.12cm
NC2020-026
Tangible yet elusive, Carter’s compositions echo the satirical study (written by Leo Lionni and included in his 1977 book, “Parallel Botany”) of an elusive vegetal kingdom of plants that are “unconstrained by any known laws of nature” (and never truly existed.) Carter envisions these fantastical landscapes as gardens of unearthly delights, drawing upon diverse visual references such as the 15th c. Voynich manuscript or the fairytale landscapes of Danish illustrator Kay Nielsen. In works like “Panromantic Portia Reciprosexual Regis,” Carter’s organisms of movement and play are effortlessly abstracted into a state of ecstatic metamorphosis.
Jordan Casteel (b. 1989, Denver, CO) roots her practice in community engagement, painting from her own photographs of people she encounters. Capturing her subjects in their natural environments, her nearly life-size portraits and cropped compositions chronicle personal observations of the human experience.
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Jordan Casteel
Golden Arches, 2020
Oil on canvas
78 x 60"/ 198.12 x 152.4 cm
JC2020-009
Casteel presents “Golden Arches” (2020), a new painting from an ongoing series she refers to as “subway” or “crop” paintings. Sourced from candid photographs taken on the NYC subway, the artist captures a moment in time beyond context or backstory. Lacking eye contact, the substance of the paintings in this series is in the details. Here, the focus is a moment of pause on a bustling city train featuring a young mother straddled by her two children on their ride home from a long, wintry day. In a double entendre between title and composition, the three figures together form their own set of golden arches. Casteel shot the photograph prior to the global pandemic, as evidenced by the absence of face masks. However, her inclusion of a dangling bottle of Purell forecasts all that has taken place and offers a glimpse of daily life and commuting as it once was.
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Sarah Crowner (b. 1974, Philadelphia, PA) renders color, line, and form into colorful abstractions inspired by organic shapes found in nature.
She is best known for her geometric paintings, made from raw and painted canvases that are cut from patterns, collaged, and sewn back together into dynamic and vibrant compositions. In addition to the natural world, Crowner’s visual language often references mid-century abstraction, architecture, theatre, and modern design.
Crowner presents a new, large-scale painting titled “Sliced Black and Blue” (2020). The work weaves black and neutral forms together with undulating, cerulean blue segments of canvas. Her application of acrylic paint varies emphatically across the composition; from densely saturated sections of canvas that appear dyed, to more familiar expressionist brushwork, to even lighter washes of color that recall the soak-stain technique of Helen Frankenthaler.
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Sarah Crowner
Sliced Black and Blue, 2020
Acrylic on canvas, sewn
70 x 72"/ 177.8 x 182.88cm
SC2020-037
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The black forms that punctuate the right side of the composition recall teardrops or falling leaves, in a pattern reminiscent of Crowner’s acclaimed “Stretched Stem” paintings, which were prominently featured in the artist’s solo exhibition “Beetle in the Leaves,” at MASS MoCA in 2017. The dark, ovular shapes stand in stark contrast to the more ambiguous and biomorphic sections of raw canvas that dominate the left side of the painting. This manipulation of positive and negative space is fundamental to Crowner’s practice, as shapes are reproduced, spliced, contorted, and rearranged back together in an ongoing spatial play.
Across the painting, individual shapes are differentiated not only by color, but also by the visible seams that simultaneously bind and divide them. These sewn sutures further accentuate the painting as a constructed object, rather than a flattened, two-dimensional image, encouraging the viewer to consider the physical experience of both making and observing. With a masterful handling of surface, color, and form, Crowner continues to challenge the constraints of material and embrace the endless possibilities of abstraction.
N. Dash (b. 1980) engages the processes of temporal and metaphysical transmutation, in a cross-disciplinary practice that spans painting, sculpture, drawing, and photography.
Employing both synthetic and organic materials, Dash's work harnesses the sensory and informational capacities of touch and typically unobserved conduits of energy: ecological, architectural, and corporeal. Guided by this approach, the artworks unfold through a bifocal approach, where two minds, under the influence of physical and extra-sensory influences, are communing visions - both nearby and remote.
Dash presents “Untitled” (2020), a new painting composed of pigment, acrylic, silkscreen ink, linen, and jute. A layer of earth/adobe, applied at varying densities over stretched jute with the aid of a trowel, functions as a vital substrate upon which the composition is integrated. Sourced from the desert, this primary building material is sealed beneath layers of paint, revealing the cracks and fissures that occur as the adobe/mud dries. The permeability of the adobe and its textural resonance is foundational to Dash’s work, both structurally, and as a catalyst for reciprocal exchange.
The layered materials that comprise the painting are diligently organized, culminating in a visceral composition, that is at once geometric and biomorphic. The vertical panel is swathed in lengths of linen that wrap around the entire painting to simultaneously bind and trisect the composition. Both unified and fragmented, the painting is defined by a mereological coherence, speaking to both holistic symbiosis, and mutual dependency. The linen fibers are saturated with dark acrylic, in what at first appears to be an abstract ombre, but upon closer inspection reveals a rosetta-patterned gradation that has been silkscreened overtop the fabric. The upper and bottom sections of the painting also contain layers of acrylic that have been applied by hand using an open screen so that the pigment is absorbed by the adobe at varying densities, lending the puckered surface a topographic quality. With a measured handing of these seemingly polar qualities, the painting maintains a cultivated tension that is regimentally balanced - just shy of equilibrium.
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N. Dash
Untitled, 2020
Adobe, acrylic, pigment, silkscreen, ink, linen, jute
54 x 27"/ 137.16 x 68.58cm
ND2020-007
Judith Eisler (b. 1962, Newark, NJ) presents “Billie" (2020), a new oil painting depicting the famed singer and performer Billie Holiday (1915 - 1959), adapted from the 1947 musical "New Orleans," co-starring Louis Armstrong.
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Eisler paints cinematic close-ups - often tightly cropped portraits - sourced from her own photographs of paused film scenes. She carefully selects single frames that are compositionally indicative of underlying narratives, in consideration of the formal properties of light, color, and space. Moments of action and manifestations of emotion are transmitted through a moving image, first through a digital channel of screens and monitors, then to the artist’s photographs, and finally to her paintings. Working with oil on canvas, Eisler directs our view to the visual optics of cinematic happenings.
Eisler has recently expanded her source material to include contemporary imagery appropriated from politics, sports, and entertainment. However, in “Billie,” she returns to her longstanding practice of painting cinematic close-ups taken from stills from classic films spanning from the 1940s to the 1970s. These figures are an integral part of staged fiction, performing according to script and interpretation. Lighting, camera, hair, makeup, and wardrobe all contribute to the artifice of a filmic presence.
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Judith Eisler
Billie, 2020
Oil on canvas
59 x 47" / 150 x 120cm
JE2020-019
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"New Orleans" was released near the end of Holiday’s singing career. Her character in the film is a singing maid, who becomes romantically involved with Armstrong after performing with him. Eisler depicts the singer with her mouth agape and her eyes closed, in the midst of a performance of the song “The Blues Are Brewin.” The portrait is tightly cropped, zoomed in on Holiday’s face. In the upper left corner of the image, Armstrong is slightly visible accompanying Holiday on trumpet. Abstracted shining light frames Holiday’s face, highlighting its contours through contrasts of light and shadow as she sings.
Eisler maintains the monochromatic color palette of the original film while skillfully incorporating the pixelated striations that often occur when photographing TV monitors. These striations are a result of a moiré pattern, a large-scale interference pattern that occurs when photographing a television screen, a failure of video pixels to coordinate with the screen’s display. These distorted bands of red and blue light sweep across Holiday’s visage. Instead of a naturalistic depiction, Eisler’s filmic rendering portrays the image of Holiday as reproduced and rebroadcast on film screens and televisions. The resulting honorific, yet layered portrait of the singer evokes romantic notions of nostalgia for iconic women of years past.
Jonathan Gardner’s (b. 1982, Lexington, KY) paintings conjure an invented universe. The artist’s compositions recall figures and objects familiar yet obscure, anchored by modern art history as well as imagined tableaus.
A studied staging of space blurs the hierarchy of components in each composition, which Gardner translates into the picture plane through a leveling of figures and objects. Heavily influenced by the European surrealists (1920-1950) and by the Chicago Imagists (1966-1971), Gardner fuses these stylistic sensibilities with his own invented worlds.
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Jonathan Gardner
Emerald Passage
2020
Oil on linen
51 x 45"/ 129.54 x 114.3cm
JG2020-010
More recently, the artist has begun incorporating peculiar framing devices and collaged elements sourced from his preparatory drawings and previous paintings in order to further complicate the picture plane. The illusionary worlds of Jim Nutt, Balthus, Léger, Picasso, and Matisse are present and timeless, only to be manipulated by formulaic techniques reminiscent of tromp l’oeil.
"Emerald Passage" (2020) reveals Gardner’s surreal technique of framing one landscape within another, akin to René Magritte’s “The Human Condition” series (1933 and 1935), in which the artist used objects to hide what laid behind them, resulting in a painting within a painting. In the foreground, a TV monitor casts an image of a woman with her back turned to the viewer, staring down a vacant country road. Dressed in contemporary fashion, an oversized beige jacket and striped pants, Gardner nods to a current moment in time. Random items such as a seashell, a twig of holly and a matchbook (sourced from an actual matchbook designed for the gallery’s 25th anniversary) sit on a wooden TV stand. The pastoral setting extends beyond the frame of the monitor, its vanishing point obscured.
Further complicating the composition, Gardner inserts a red, drawn curtain that borders the edge of the canvas. Theatrical and out of place, the curtain blurs the distinction between on and off stage. A semi-circle doormat rests at the base of the composition, beckoning the viewer to enter Gardner’s hyper-stylized environment abound with illusions of narratives that are never fully revealed.
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Liam Gillick (b. 1964, Aylesbury, UK) utilizes materials that resemble everyday built environments, transforming them into minimalist abstractions that scrutinize ideological constructs and and the history of modernism.
His use of mass-produced materials and standardized colors speaks to various modes of production and the ways in which social, political, and economical systems are reflected in our built environments. Working across sculpture, film, curation, music composition, drawing, and writing, Gillick deliberately blurs the boundaries of art, architecture, and design.
Gillick presents “Structured Fall” (2012) - a powder-coated aluminum sculpture from an ongoing series of “wall units.” The rectilinear structure is rendered in dark blue, black, grey, and white - standardized Pantone hues that are used frequently in product design and industrial manufacturing, but also distinctly familiar to modern art. The horizontal work exists in a serial, modular format, reminiscent of readymade furnishings or secondary architecture. While the piece formally resembles a functional object, no discernible utility can be verified. Gillick purposefully manipulates these visual connotations - denying clear classification so that the work may act as a catalyst for discussion. Installed low on the wall, not at the height of the painting, “wall units” are encountered by the viewer, close to the body. Playing with the formal language of minimalism as an access point, Gillick questions the role of art and artmaking within our broader contemporary moment, while offering room for open and mutual exchange.
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Liam Gillick
Structured Fall, 2012
Powder coated aluminium
5.9 x 39.4 x 5.9” / 15 x 100 x 15cm
LG2012-023
For the past four decades, Giorgio Griffa (b. 1936, Turin, Italy) has developed a practice that he describes as “constant and never finished” adhering to “the memory of material” and to the belief that the gesture of painting is an infinite one. Griffa strives to record the process of painting by eliminating perspective and narrative, instead limiting his markings to repetitive sequences of symbols and gestures on unstretched canvas, burlap or linen.
The relationship between materials further informs his process as each absorbed brushstroke dictates the next. The paintings are pinned directly to the wall along their top edge and when not exhibited they are folded and stacked, creating an underlying grid for his compositions. Driven by notions of time, rhythm and memory, Griffa reflects on the faculty of an anonymous, restrained gesture and its capacity to be both distinctive and integral.
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Griffa presents “Domupoz” (2019), a painting from his “Shaman” series. At the center of this recent body of work is the artist’s reflection on ancient traditions, and the idea of the new arising from the roots of the old. Griffa believes that the history of humanity is based on the history of thought and reason. The ancient narrative of the shaman relies on this premise and particularly the access to an unknown world. To enter this hidden universe, the shaman must speak invented words, and along this vein, Griffa has created his own word without meaning: “Domupoz.” As with Griffa's previous series “Golden Ratio,” which takes us beyond the limits of reason, the words of the shaman provide an entry to a part of the world that we cannot yet identify. Griffa further equates this hidden realm to art - also a space that exists without the boundaries of logic.
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Giorgio Griffa
Domupoz, 2019
Acrylic on canvas (cotone)
78.7 x 79.1" / 199.89 x 200.9cm
GG2019-009
Brian Jungen’s (b. 1970, Fort St. John, Canada) multidisciplinary practice spans drawing, sculpture and installation, often repurposing highly recognizable objects and symbols associated with capitalism and Western culture into transformative works.
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Brian Jungen
Umbo, 2020
Ink on paper
18 x 24"/ 45.72 x 60.96cm
BJ2020-002
Sold on condition of loan: Casey Kaplan, New York, January 28 - March 3, 2021
An artist of both Swiss and Dane-zaa Nation heritage, Jungen frequently employs traditional First Nation techniques culled from observations of life on indigenous reserves in northwest Canada. Through a pseudo-anthropological approach, Jungen’s artworks uniquely engage notions of cultural hybridity in relation to identity and place.
The drawing “Umbo" (2020) reveals a new iteration of Jungen's decades-long use of mark making as a means of communing the human experience. The work depicts an array of red, cartoonish figures, rendered in the artist’s unique visual language. The figures are smudged with a surface layer of dark blue ink and presented against a stark white background. Since art school, Jungen has returned to drawing as a primary component of his wide-ranging practice. While his sculptures and installations are often shaped with a specific formal referent in mind, drawing allows for a more automatic engagement with the creative process. By applying ink to paper, Jungen is able to explore questions about various aspects of cultural identity.
In the artist’s own words: “I was interested in the tools of anthropology and how the West looked at the non-West. These drawings were almost automatic, full of overlapping line drawings. I made hundreds but very few exist today. I was interested in playing with stereotypes of Native folks but adding queerness to the mix and putting this work literally out in the streets. I wanted the images to be directly available to the public without the mediation of exhibitions. This led to my on-the-street solicited drawing project, which was my first attempt at installation art and the beginning of my departure from drawing…
Perhaps these drawings can share a little of the loneliness, humor and celebration that resides in all of us.” - Brian Jungen, 2017
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Mateo López (b. 1978, Bogotá, Colombia) expands the scope of drawing to consider the medium in time and space, ultimately pushing the boundaries of the page, and our perception of our environment. His multifaceted practice spans diverse fields of study, from architecture and design to educational theory and dance, which takes form in works on paper, sculpture, site-specific installation, and performance.
López presents “Palabras agudas,” a hollow mold of the artist’s face (absent of his eyes) cast in bronze with a grey oxide patina, akin to graphite. A red pencil, the kind López uses for marking where to cut lines on paper or wood sculptures, pierces the cast through a hole in the mouth. A visual analogy between speaking and drawing is formed.
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Mateo López
Palabras agudas, 2020
Bronze cast, patina, red pencil
4.125 x 4 x 6"/ 10.5 × 10.2 × 15.2 cm
Edition 1/3 + 1AP
ML2020-018
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The graphite point of the pencil balances on the base of a pedestal, on the verge of marking the surface beneath as the weight of the visage falls forward. The mask is a reappearing image in López’s practice, originally implemented in 2017 to hide the face of López’s frequent collaborator, the choreographer Lee Serle, in a series of performances at New York’s The Drawing Center. The dancer’s masked movements recalled that of a puppet on a stage, mimicking the action of the artist’s compass on his architectural plans.
A transference of energy between the body and sculpture through performance has become essential to López’s work. In this movement, the body serves as a bridge between the physical and the cognitive rather than a tool that only manipulates. López continues his application of dance and performance in traditional forms of mark-making and sculpture. Here, the mask becomes more than a covering, but a corporeal representation of the subtle contours and creases of his face, unseeing on the brink of making another mark.
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Through varying methodologies, Jonathan Monk (b. 1969, Leicester, UK) considers the pervasiveness of certain art historical influences and the process of canonization. For many years, the artist self-educated primarily through books; a practice that deeply informed his understanding of both making and viewing art.
The contrast between original and copy is fundamental to the artist’s oeuvre - both conceptually and materially.
In his own words: “We are used to looking at pictures of work rather than the work itself. It has become almost impossible to tell the difference. I often see art in museums that I only know from books... I feel I already know the work, probably without having seen it. Most art I experience in my head anyway... but naturally the physical interaction with some artwork can’t be matched on the printed page. My show(s) might have the feeling of walking through the pages of a crudely photocopied book.”
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Jonathan Monk
Untitled (magazine trees) LXI, 2020
Digital print, watercolor and gouache on magazine page
11.625 x 8.25"/ 29.5 x 20.95 cm
JM2020-053
Monk presents a suite of new watercolors on paper, from his ongoing series, “Untitled (Trees).” To produce the artworks, Monk appropriates and reimagines imagery from the late Italian artist Salvo. Born Salvatore Mangione, (Sicily, 1947), Salvo is known for his ethereal landscapes, which he began in the early 1970s from his studio in Alba, located in the Langhe region of northern Italy. Rendered in vibrant hues, these pastoral scenes are both imaginative and representational, pulling inspiration from the “Italian Pittura Metafisica” (or "Metaphysical Painting") movement of the early 20th century, founded by artists Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà.
Monk’s “Untitled (Trees)” series was born shortly after Salvo’s death in September of 2015. Initially conceived as a heartfelt tribute to the beloved artist, Monk’s tree paintings were first exhibited the following year, in a solo presentation at Salvo’s former studio - now the site of Archivio Salvo - in Turin, Italy, organized by Salvo’s daughter Norma Mangione.
Monk begins by sourcing pictures of Salvo’s colorful, surreal landscapes from the internet. Monk downloads these images, prints them onto canvas or magazine paper and then paints directly over the top with gouache, sparing only the trees from the original composition. Through this process, the appropriated imagery is significantly modified through Monk’s own gestural contribution, while remaining recognizable as Salvo's work. Monk's paintings and works on paper speak to processes of erasure in art history, plus themes of originality and authorship. The retail value of each of Monk’s Salvo artworks is determined by the number of trees depicted in each composition. Radically affordable in comparison to Monk’s primary market, this irreverent pricing structure parodies the frivolity of the art market at large, where secondary prices can soar to the precipice of absurdity. By maintaining a low price point, the Salvo paintings and works on paper function as a gesture of inclusivity and accessibility, as well as a sly critique of the luxury goods market at large.
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Jonathan Monk
Untitled (magazine trees) LXII, 2020
Digital print, watercolor and gouache on magazine page
11.25 x 8.25"/28.57 x 20.9cm
JM2020-054
Matthew Ronay’s (b. 1976, Louisville, KY) practice is the embodiment of a masterful handling of materials through a fetishistic pursuit of form. Working primarily with basswood, his sculptures are all made by hand; each component carved, whittled, sanded, pierced, dyed, and joined together into colorful configurations that visually defy their wooden medium.
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Matthew Ronay
CRT, 2020
Basswood, dye, gouache, flocking, steel, epoxy
12.25 x 16.75 x 5"/ 31.11 x 42.55 x 12.7cm
MR2020-009
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Through this process, Ronay fuses histories of minimalism, surrealism, abstraction, and American folk art with other non-western methods of art-making and traditional craft. This past spring, during the nationwide COVID-19 lockdowns, Ronay maintained his rigorous studio practice - shifting away from larger-scale sculptures to return his focus towards a series of intimately scaled and intricately detailed sculptures. Bordering ritualistic, these new artworks require an acute attention to detail, and engender a personal, one-on-one experience with the viewer.
“CRT” (2020) creates a tableau of green, yellow, and blue forms. On the left, a vertical green form mimics the trunk of a tree from which a spherical, blue protrusion emerges. Its ovular shape is buttressed on the far right by a rectangular piece of wood, adorned with a red orange sculpted growth reminiscent of moss. To the right, short, angular yellow forms gather each with their own bulbous, lime green addendums. Ronay’s deliberately vibrant, otherworldly palette, alongside his manipulation of organic materials and forms, plays with the boundary between natural and synthetic. Carefully dyed, the grain of the wood remains visible throughout the sculpture, while the meticulous, carved textures imbue the work with an acute tactility. Its opposing ends are connected by delicate, light blue webbing, unifying the composition. Together the forms envision an alien ecosystem or geometric landscape, reflecting Ronay's material proficiency and ongoing formal play. With references to biological and botanical forms, as well as futuristic technology and cityscapes, Ronay’s phantasmagoric creations give shape to a combination of subconscious imagery, and immediate intuitive sensations.
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The work of Garth Weiser (b. 1979, Helena, MT) is defined by spatial and perceptual deviation. Moving fluidly between systematic protocol and pure intuition, Weiser builds his dense and tactile canvases in layers, pushing each composition until multiple intersecting patterns emerge.
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Garth Weiser
remote group ceremony, 2020
Oil on panel
20 x 16"/ 50.8 x 40.64cm GW2020-007
With a proficient understanding of material, texture, and form, Weiser manipulates optical effects with his paintings, while transforming them into near sculptural objects, experienced in relation to one’s own body.
In recent years, Weiser has introduced elements of representation into his abstract paintings - beginning with the incorporation of printed t-shirts and other textiles that first appeared in his 2017 solo-exhibition at the gallery. Expanding upon this collage-like methodology, Weiser has since cultivated a unique process of downloading pictures from the internet, manipulating them in Adobe Photoshop, and then transferring those new images directly onto his oil canvases.
Weiser maintains a non-hierarchical and intuitive approach to the sourcing of imagery, moving through niche social-media forums such as Reddit and Tumblr, to e-commerce sites peddling Clipart renderings and CAD vectors. Pictures are chosen just as much for their formal and textural qualities as for any implied content, which range from symbolically loaded to banal. Through his own series of distortions - both digitally and via the process of painting - Weiser reclaims remnants of digital waste that pollute cyberspace, where visual content is exhaustingly generated, distributed, and discarded in a never-ending stream of user-controlled appropriation.
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Weiser presents two recent oil paintings on panel that exemplify this new process. These paintings skillfully weave virtual figuration and abstract form, with varied legibility. “remote group ceremony” depicts what appears to be the spiraled tentacle of a fantasy sea-creature, rendered in psychedelic hues against a bright yellow background. The illusory texture of the computer-generated extremity melds with the tactility of thickly applied oil paint. In contrast, the dark purple palette of “dear soul family” obscures much of the underpainting, save for an anemic, claw-like form in the upper right quadrant that is punctuated by streaks of bright silver spray-paint with moiré pattern.
Each painting is layered with surface striations, where Weiser has taped off the initial composition, but then continued to paint overtop, revealing indentations when the tape is removed. Additional excavations are made by scraping away exterior layers of paint with a utility knife to reveal pops of color or glimpses of printed imagery underneath. Both alien and inexplicably familiar, Weiser’s choice of imagery speaks to a collective subconscious permeated by anxiety, dissociation, sanctimony, escapism, and social isolation - perhaps best illustrated by the bright orange balloon font reading “2020,” that appears in both compositions. Within this framework, the artist demonstrates his persistent exploration of material as he continues to challenge the limitations and potentiality of abstraction.
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Garth Weiser
dear soul family, 2020
Oil on panel
20 x 16"/ 50.8 x 40.64cm
GW2020-008
