Never Work is pleased to announce Umbra/Penumbra, an exhibition of new paintings by Ariel Dill. Oppositions collide in Dill’s work resulting in paintings that are both playful and sinister, embodying the psychological tension between interior and exterior worlds.

Working on canvases ranging from small rectangles to larger diamonds, Dill carves lines into the opaque top layers of paint to reveal the radiant, gestural stains and loose washes of color beneath. The surface texture and movement created by this process fix the work in the physical realm even as the incisions produce the illusion of space and splintering of light.

Dill’s abstraction is infused with diverse imagery, sifted through elements of Emma Kunz’s energy fields, woodblock prints, textiles of the Wiener Werkstëtte, Rayonism and film noir – pairing known and unknown, visible and invisible in a curious shadow-play.