Blackston is pleased to present Afterglow, Justin Adian’s first solo exhibition in New York of oil on canvas paintings.

Adian’s abstract, shaped, protrusive oil paintings on canvas tightly stretched over foam engage and reveal the artist’s gestures and brushstrokes and the shape and depth of the canvas.

By eliminating sharp edges, Adian facilitates the movement of paint over a varying topography in a way that promotes textural expression and tests the limits of a particular color as it reacts to the canvas’s folds, contours, shadows and puckers. His paintings defy the limits of the frame.

Frequently, the paintings in this series combine two or more shapes to form a single work. In certain pieces Adian paints on the entire surface of the canvas, including its underside, resulting in a color reflection on the mounting wall.

Much like the shaped canvas paintings of the 1960s and 1970s by artists such as Kenneth Noland and Ellsworth Kelly, which rely on the edge for definition and resolution, Adian’s paintings explore the space beyond the rectilinear frame.

While they are rooted in abstract and minimalist traditions, his paintings are equally imbued with playfulness by the nature of their unfamiliar – and sometimes whimsical—shapes and unorthodox use of color.

Adian lives and works in New York City and was born in 1976 in Fort Worth, Texas. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of Art, New Brunswick, NJ, in 2003, and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of North Texas in 2000. Select group exhibitions include You Were There, curated by Thomas Duncan at Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York City, 2010; Untitled, Jack the Pelican Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Conceptual Furniture, DepARTment Gallery, Toronto Ontario, Lynchmob, HBC Gallery, Berlin, Germany, all in 2009; Collapsed Present, North Hall Gallery, New York, NY, 2008; and UNT/NYC #2: Painting, the Semi Sublime, UNT Artspace, Fort Worth, TX, 2007.