Heskin Contemporary presents Of Necessity: Recent Works on Paper and Sculpture by Timothy Linn.

Timothy Linn has developed his artistic vocabulary over years of experimentation within the traditional media of painting and sculpture, leading to a recent body of work that is compelling for its clarity and directness. Over time, he has pared down his imagery to the point where material and concept are of equal importance in the visual dynamic of his two and three-dimensional works.

The work is drawn from sources as diverse as architecture; the geometries of pre-Columbian artifacts; workmanship in the recently discovered Staffordshire hoard; shapes inspired by a shampoo bottles; tap dance; jazz music; the paintings of Guston, Matisse, Cezanne, the Polish Constructivists; the enormous sculptures of Serra; and many keen observations of nature. In his synthesis of these divergent sources it is evident that Linn is entirely at ease with the complex lessons offered by modern, contemporary, primitive, and ancient art alike.

His works on paper and sculpture demonstrate how an artist can work with a set of criteria and apply it with variations to different media, ultimately finding something unique and distinctive in the process. The works on paper are distinguished by their overt simplicity, coming as they do from years of searching for essential forms and reductive gesture. The format, for both the sculpture and works on paper, is primarily vertical, suggesting both figuration, and, more significantly, architectural space. In fact, a painterly architecture might be an accurate or poetic way to describe Linn’s art in its lean and linear appearance.

The artist has set rigorous conditions for his works on paper, giving painting and relief a feeling of nuance and color not often found in contemporary work. The meeting point between sculpture, relief and surface of this unadorned work is that of an artist who has found his parameters and continues to explore it’s seemingly unlimited potential.

Timothy Linn received his MFA and BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. In the eighties he collaborated (designing sets) with Henry Threadgill’s Run Silent, Run Deep, Run Loud, Run High for BAM, Brooklyn, New York. The artist has had a number of solo exhibitions in New York and Chicago. He has also been included in numerous group exhibitions in Europe and throughout the U.S. This is Linn’s first exhibition at Heskin Contemporary. There is a catalog accompanying the exhibition with essay by Jennifer Riley.