Blackston is pleased to present Come and Take It, Justin Adian’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. A reception for the artist will be held on Sunday, April 29th from 6 to 8 p.m.

Adian’s latest series of abstract, shaped, protrusive oil paintings on canvas tightly stretched over foam continue to evince his precise and experimental command of form, proportion and composition.

The surfaces, painted in monochromatic hues of varying degrees of brightness and sheen, activate and reveal painterly concerns across the shape and depth of the canvas. A robust physicality presents itself in the meeting of paint with the canvas’s puckers and contours.

Frequently comprising two or more distinctively shaped elements to form a single cohesive piece, the artist’s work comfortably straddles the theoretical divide between painting and sculpture with wry assertiveness.

Rooted in Abstract and Minimalist traditions, Adian’s paintings embody a pioneering, if not punk rock, spirit – demonstrating an effervescence, looseness and playfulness in their unique composition and unexpected colors.

Adian lives and works in New York City and was born in 1976 in Fort Worth, Texas. Select exhibitions include New Traditionalists, organized by Mary Grace Wright, Martos Gallery, New York, NY, 2012; Battle of the Brush, curated by Alexander Glauber, Bryant Park, New York, NY, 2010-11: Afterglow, Blackston, New York, NY, 2010; You Were There, curated by Thomas Duncan at Rachel Uffner Gallery in New York, NY, 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. 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, Fort Worth, TX, in 2000.