Exhibitions
ALEX BLAU & LAIN YORK
Zeitgeist Gallery / 516 Hagan St., #100 September 2, 2017 - October 28, 2017
Alex Blau, Lain York
Alex Blau: Night Swimming
The paintings of Night Swimming have been in the works for the last two years. This body of work continues the artist’s obsession with explosive color and geometry while introducing the condition of amorphous fluidity. The new strategies in play evolved from the materials themselves, and from the artifacts leftover from the painting process. The contested focus of these works allows the paintings to create compelling atmospheric depth as elements appear and disappear in billowing waves of color. This lens of distortion embodies the unknown, creating surprising and fresh fractured combinations of pattern and color, shape and formlessness. Using dyes, airbrush, handcut stencils and a loose improvisational hand, Night Swimming hopes to bring the audience into these lavish and saturated worlds.
Lain York: Ghost/July 2107
This series picks up on work I started back in 2008 that was an effort to get back to drawing. At the time I was working with images of archaeological dig sites on plywood and graphite pencil. The birch surfaces reminded me of topographic maps and was interested in more rudimentary mark-making tools. Correct-tape provided a “response” to the graphite and was fun (and very challenging) to work with. A writer commented on the irony of making images about a historic record with an erasing tool and I thought it would be a good metaphor here.
Ghost refers to the fragile and vital relationship between bees and flowers. No bees, no flowers/no flowers, no bees. And basically, no anything else.
I hope to keep these images as simple and as minimal as possible. Many drawings are made of each image before they go onto the wood in an effort to distill the steps in making them. - Lain York
image: Alex Blau, Are We There Yet?, 2017, 24 x 24 Inches, Acrylic on Canvas
