Parallel Art Space is proud to present Same Same but Different, an inaugural selection of works from artists Jay Gaskill, Fabian G. Tabibian, and Amanda Valdez who form the exhibition collective of the same name. Taking their name from the descriptor employed by Southeast Asian street merchants to assert the qualitative parity of their wares, Same Same but Different, through namesake, acknowledges their formalistic affinities, purposeful colors, bold shapes and complex arrangements, as well as their idiomatic divarications. Working within this shared language of formalism, each artist employs distinct materials and subject matter that highlights the points at which their works converge and diverge from one another.

Elevating the material supports of painting to a level of consideration on par with the most vibrant of mediums, Amanda Valdez engineers her surfaces, interweaving paint, canvas, fabric and thread with concerns of color, shape and composition. Adeptly juxtaposing shimmering embroidery with metallic pigments and fabric sheen with canvas tooth, Valdez maintains a perfect equipoise between visual intrigue and overall order in her works.

Jay Gaskill brings a post-superflat, pop and graphic-design sensibility to his cool paintings of interwoven line, repeated pattern and colorful shape. With motifs suggestive of buddhist mandalas, celtic knots and/or anime figures, Gaskill painstakingly creates hard-edged, iconic forms entirely by hand, traversing the spheres of mechanical reproduction and handicraft with uniqueness and aplomb.

Sifting through the visual detritus of our online para-reality, Fabian G. Tabibian takes among his sources of inspiration, personal web-surfing patterns, sampled bits of electronic information, and website favicons. Through the manipulation of digital media and the incorporation of his own hand within this realm, Tabibian brings a consideration of color, line and form and a painter’s philosophical model of assimilation and production to the province of photoelectric media and print.

Whatever their stylistic differentiations, these artists are engaging the endeavor of painting in ways familiar, if not quite the “same” as those who have gone before them, with results that are fabulously “different’ and decidedly their own.