Lucien Terras Inc., New York
June 28th – July 30th, 2015
Opening Reception: June 28th, 6-8pm
Hours: Wednesday – Friday 11am – 6pm or by appointment (closed on Friday, July 3rd)
Lucien Terras is pleased to present LOOM and exhibition that brings together four abstract painters: Gianna Commito, Adam Henry, Ryan Mrozowski and Ann Pibal.
The title of the show LOOM makes reference to shapes and repetition of form as an organizing system to generate abstraction, a process used in textile and weaving that is here embraced as a metaphor. For these four painters, the support of the painting (canvas for Henry, wood panel for Commito and Mrozowski and aluminum panel for Pibal) is the vector of decision making carefully premeditated. This explains the modest scale and the crafted execution of the work. The economy of means is calibrated to a purpose, not to an effect and one can follow the eye, the hand and the mind behind the wandering paint dots of Adam Henry filling the loose knit of burlap, the puzzle like rectangular wood shapes assembled in Ryan Mrozowski triptych and the diagonal lines crisscrossing the complex constructions of Gianna Commito and Ann Pibal.
The pantheon of these painters may count figures like Anni Albers but also crafts like the quilts of Gee’s Bend, interesting moments such as Al Held’s passage from action to abstraction in the 50s as much as revered figures like Agnes Martin or Sol LeWitt. The works of the four painters integrates the use value of historical avant-garde into domestic scale paintings, yet they are far from nostalgic.
They may also signal a reaction to a process oriented approach of painting that has been prevalent in recent years to such an extent that it has became a tiresome iteration of the same. Making paintings that are not determined by process as an end in itself, the four painters present a different proposition and an exciting rebound about the possibilities of abstraction today.
Gianna Commito has exhibited at Rachel Uffner gallery, Taxter and Spengemann Gallery and was recently awarded the 2015 Emerging Artist award from Cleveland Arts Prize.
Adam Henry graduated from Yale in 2000 and has held solo exhibitions at Meessen de Clercq Gallery in Brussels and Joe Sheftel Gallery in New York.
Ryan Mrozowski has shown at Pierogi in Brooklyn and Daniel Weinberg Gallery in Los Angeles. His work is on view this summer in group shows at Boesky East and Salon 94.
Ann Pibal has exhibited widely since 2000 and her work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, Hirshhorn Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT among others.