Exhibitions

ERIC SALL: ORANGE YOU GLAD I DIDN’T SAY BANANA?

Tinney Contemporary / 237 Rep John Lewis Way N. January 18 - February 15th

Eric Sall

Tinney Contemporary is proud to present Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?, a solo exhibition of works by Tulsa-based artist Eric Sall. The exhibition will be on display from January 4 to February 15, 2025. The opening reception will be held on Saturday, January 11 from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. in conjunction with the Downtown Art District Alliance’s Second Saturday Art Crawl.

Sall’s imposing polychrome abstract paintings contain a restrained yet energetic gesturalism. Each large canvas is oriented vertically, approximating a doorway—viewers gaze through these thresholds to fields of color, brushstroke-confetti, geometric internal rhythm, and jumbled cartoonish forms resembling gemstones, leaves, four-leaf clovers, peppermints and pinwheels. The works take on an immersive quality by virtue of their scale, color, and rhythm.

The title of the exhibition, Orange You Glad I Didn’t Say Banana?, is an absurdist childhood knock-knock joke of subverted expectation, a mad-hatter-style interrupting-goad. Sall’s work is abstraction at its best: a perfect response to the everyday assault on meaning, to the cheapening of language, to abounding absurdism. These somatic exercises in mark making offer emergency exits, backdoor escape routes into pure color and movement. The exhibition is an argument for chromatherapy as an antidote for the chronically online—leave it to the rods and cones to rewire your brain, if only for a moment.