Featuring the work of: Joseph Bernard Paul Corio Nate Ethier Francis Farmer Stacy Fisher Linda Francis Hanz Hancock William Hughes Jeffrey Mathews Patrick Morrissey David E. Peterson Allie Rex Mark Sengbusch Karen Schifano Ian Swanson Tracy Thomason

Allegra LaViola Gallery is pleased to present Grid List, curated by Patrick Morrissey and Mark Sengbusch. Grid List presents 16 artists, 13 working in geometric abstraction, and three working quite “gridless”. Their conceptual fodder ranges from sports to math and science to film, graphic design and video.

The grid has existed for centuries: from cave walls to stone tablets to Papyrus—from agriculture, architecture and weaving to the roadways and computers of today. We feel it directly as well, gravity still drops a vertical line—rain, apples and basketballs all fall to meet the horizontal land. The right angle is alive and well today as it was at the earth’s formation.

The artist draws from the imbedded and inherent grid and Grid List explores the influence of the grid on artists. We trace back the source of Geometric Abstraction past Albers and LeWitt to a more personal and direct place.

The artists in Grid List come from varied but interwoven locations and backgrounds, four from London, one from Atlanta, one from Detroit and ten from New York City. Four of the artists have connections with Minus Space Gallery (Schifano, Francis, Ethier, Peterson) and four hold MFAs from Cranbrook’s Painting Dept. (Mathews, Rex, Thomason, Sengbusch). Peterson, Mathews, and Sengbusch met in 1997 at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit where they studied under Joseph Bernard.

Thus the threads of the Grid List entwine. We hope to present a new take on Geometric Abstraction with a focus on the individual artist’s idiosyncratic relationship with the Grid.

In addition to the Artists in the show there will be “Non-Art” examples of the grid including a Kuba Cloth, a Nintendo (Tetris), Photos of the grid in Cave Art (Lascaux) and a real slice of a Meteorite. There are non- circuitous correlations between the grid in Nature, pre-history, technology and the artist’s mind.

This will be the second iteration of the Exhibition. The Center Galleries at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit presented Grid List in February 2012.