Exhibitions
JULIAN ROGERS: LIQUID, SOLID, GAS, GHOST
The Red Arrow Gallery / 919 Gallatin Ave. , Suite #4 December 2, 2023 - December 30, 2023
Julian Rogers
Red Arrow is honored to present, Liquid, solid, gas, ghost. A solo exhibition from Julian Rogers featuring twelve fantastical new oil paintings in his ongoing study of the sky that surrounds us.
Fauvism has been on my mind for at least a decade. In its heyday maddening enough to cause riots, now the untethering of colors from their forms seems quaint. The wild beasts have been tamed, but it stands to reason that form is never just form. Take food for example. No one needs to explain that there is a difference between an expensive meal at a restaurant and a microwave dinner, although it can be hard to nail down the substance of this difference. Or the weather. When I lived in NYC, I noticed that thousands of pedestrians would collectively move from joy to irritation when the weather turned bad. Forms define moods regardless of whether we have words for them or not.
Likewise, these paintings have their own temperature, altitude, pressure. The sky is a subject, I suppose, but more likely is that it is simply a board upon which pieces can be moved and played. The clouds can be waved away so that there’s just color and shape, and the lines and textures of them taken up and redistributed along other latitudes.
Liquid Solid Gas Ghost. When I look at the sky, I constantly see things that are too unbelievable to work as paintings. In other words, I see things plain as day that would look like bad moves or wrong turns if I painted them. With these paintings I found myself trying to get out ahead of this and make my own accidents to have a bit of fun with what passes as believable. Like ghosts getting pressed back into the fabric of reality, or not. Ghosts can be anything and come and go as they please. I have mine; you have yours; we have ours, they have theirs.
– Julian Rogers, Liquid, solid, gas, ghost exhibition statement
Image: On the Polished Palace Floor, 2023, Oil on canvas, 36”x36”
