Lisa Cooley is pleased to present new paintings by Alex Olson in her first solo exhibition with the gallery, As a Verb, As a Noun, In Peach and Silver. The exhibition opens on Sunday, September 12th and runs until October 17th, 2010. A reception for the artist will be held on September 12th, from 6 until 8 pm.

These are paintings of surfaces. A lot has transpired on-over-under-through for them to be with you today. They have been scratched, scraped, scarred, imprinted upon, smooshed against, and dragged across. They have been layered and layered and layered and then impastoed over once more. They have seen paint added one day, only to be subtracted the next. In their final iteration, these paintings are as much a result of the paint on top of them as the architecture of paint beneath.

Each of these paintings has a story to tell of its making, and they are here to share them. They are swapping tales of texture and text, mark making as both material and as sign, exteriors and ideographs, supports and surfaces. They are exchanging gestures between canvases, stretching them off on tangents and burying them beneath new assertions. Some of these paintings are more declarative than others, some more articulate, and some more discreet. Some still think that grids are where it’s at, while others argue for more displacement.

These paintings have nice posture but first impressions can be misleading. They have a tendency to sweep into a room, only to trip over the rug. But they give a knowing wink and resume where they left off. They have a lot on their minds. Some stutter, some ramble, some whisper, some shout, some are close-talkers. They invite you to project upon them, examine their lines of thought, and read what their surfaces have to say.

Alex Olson received her BA from Harvard University in 2001 and her MFA from CalArts in 2008. She has participated in several group exhibitions in both Los Angeles and New York, as well as a two-person show at Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago.