Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2007, Spray paint on canvas, triptych: 36 x 24" each.
Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2007, Spray paint on canvas, triptych: 36 x 24" each.
Davis Rhodes, Untitled, 2007, Spray paint on canvas, triptych: 36 x 24" each.
Stanley Whitney, Big Love, 2006, Oil on linen, 72 x 72".
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Gardar Eide Einarsson, shield (Negative), 2007, Acrylic on wood panel, 43" diameter. |
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Team
83 Grand Street
New York
212-279-9219
Einarsson, Rhodes, Whitney
January 8-February 14, 2009
Ostensibly a three-person show of paintings, this grouping of works might appear at first glance to hang together solely on formal terms — stability battles de-centralization, the presence of vibrant color engages with its absence, concept collides with gesture. However, the ideas built up from the juxtaposition of the work, substantial enough to carry multiple dialogues, come from a creative position the participants similarly share. These three artists provoke enduring questions concerning individual and universal realities: Einarsson by disseminating text and graphics drawn from both isolated and public environments, Rhodes by giving history to elements of ubiquitous signs and shapes, and Whitney by manually organizing color according to a breakable rule set.
Gardar Eide Einarsson restates and stages message-loaded slogans, phrases, expressions, symbols, and artifacts in minimal grayscale schemes. When taken out of context, simplified, and recomposed in new materials, the messages, although nearly unrecognizable, harbor a sense of latent meaning, which instigates a search for one "true" reading of the work. This truth however remains far-off in the distance, where the political and social forces contributing to its creation and legibility were generated.
Einarsson is known for works whose apparent directness belies a complex and circuitous web of meanings. His paintings are usually black and white, and he employs the visual language and slogans used by rebels and revolutionaries, as well as authoritarian and political institutions, to instantly communicate black and white world views. But the instantly apprehensible messages and the clear visual language of graffiti and political posters are ironically undermined and displaced by their context — provided by, among other factors, his titles and subtitles, as well as the gallery environment and the times we live in.
Born in Norway, Gardar Eide Einarsson lives and works in New York. His work has been exhibited in solo shows in Oslo, Berlin, Köln, Paris and Copenhagen as well as the United States, and in group exhibitions throughout Europe. He will be included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial
Davis Rhodes blends color-field and hard-edge painting with post-minimalist positions in order to explore the relationships between private studio practice and public performance. Rhodes takes the concept of the painted object as his starting point, posing questions that surround the act of painting and the cultural values assigned to paint, surface and display strategies. Sourcing colors from forms with strong associations, Rhodes spray paints light-weight, disposable materials, also marked by the artist's hand and treated as props, which he then subjects to a cycle of environments: studio, outdoors, exhibition space.
A recent Columbia MFA graduate, Davis Rhodes takes the genre of Hard-edge painting back to the panel-beater’s floor for a working over and returns it to the gallery gleaming with humour and malice. His glossy, geometric images — bearing fragments of digits, chevrons or diamonds — evoke a commercial print shop in full flight. But these works have already seen the street, left overnight in public places to be mauled and battered or pushed with colour until the paint ran (Yellow Number 1, Jefferson Street, 9.3.07, 2007). Like a mad system of urban semaphores, they flash indeterminate messages at the viewer, presenting in microcosm the visual excess of New York City.
Stanley Whitney adheres to self-imposed constraint — for almost 30 years, painting compositions of vibrant color squares and rectangles compressed between horizontal bands. While his work makes use of formal parameters belonging to the Avant Garde and geometric abstraction, it is compelled by personal investigation, which has allowed it to paradoxically extend into and reassert itself as historic within contemporary practice. In each painting, Whitney arrives at a synthesis of dissonance and harmony without ever repeating himself, as his process reveals the schism between intent and outcome.
Stanley Whitney earned degrees from the Kansas City Art Institute and Yale University. His work has been shown in many exhibitions in galleries and museums in United States and abroad; among them the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Studio Museum Harlem, Alternative Museum New York, Magazzino d’Arte Moderna Rome, Jack Tilton Gallery NY Christine König Gallery Vienna, radioartemobile, Utopia Station, created by Zerynthia Rome for Venice Biennial, Galleria Carlina, Torino. Upcoming shows include Galerie Ramis Barquet, Monterey Mexico, and Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia, Italy. His paintings are held in numerous private and public collections all over the world. |
