Curated by Steven Stewart and Yasha Wallin James Brittingham, Devon Costello, Michael Greathouse, Jim Lee, Sylvan Lionni and Pete Pezzimenti

The practice of experiencing a painting often transcends that of a two dimensional plane – the stretcher’s depth, staples, the corner folds of canvas and material supports are all conditions by which the viewer engages and analyzes an artwork. The exhibition CHANGECASE will bring together six new artists, whose work, although diverse and individual, share common concerns in extending the traditions, language and possibilities of painting. CHANGECASE will aim to spotlight the properties inherent within painting as an art object and consider the interaction of painting with alternative media.

The artists included in the exhibition possess a common affinity for working within the eclipse of surface and support – realizing the physicality of the object and literal infrastructure that comprise a painting. By uncovering and combining essential characteristics from multiple modes of art making, the work challenges the notion of definability. These artists draw from historical ‘isms like Pop art, Minimalism and Post-Painterly Abstraction while merging them with individualized tendencies that subvert the institutions of two and three dimensionality and draw attention to the spaces between – getting from one to the other while retracing those steps to do so. This versatility gives the work a mark of hybridity, thus opening up the canon of painting.

James Brittingham’s distinct abstract vocabulary presents itself in a pair of new paintings of poured acrylic. The absence of structural support beneath the “skin” of these paintings emphasizes the necessity for material invention while charting the periphery of conventional picture making.

Michael Greathouse will include two of his sculpted paintings that contain an unabashed allegiance to three-dimension, narrowly before that of surface.Machine-like fragments rendered with machine-like exactness virtually obliterate any trace of the artist’s hand, which the sculptures are wholly generated by.

An obsessive collector of industrial detritus, Jim Lee fashions from these materials, sly and innocuous objects, which demand close study. His devoted love for potent visual flavor manifests within his uniquely assembled works. Foul and chance serve as vehicles for both sentiment and signature, as written out across the front and back of his hybrid pieces.

Devon Costello’s work exists within the grey area that the conceptual and the physical intersect. He employs formal methods of art making and art historical references with a rough hand to create works that are at times visually charged and other times call for meditative investigation. Costello plays upon varied elements to form, among other things, his own brand of crossbred objects.

Exploring techniques and materials of signage and the influence of ordinary consumerist fixtures, Sylvan Lionni continues his interest in the banal objects of everyday life. His devotion to process and the currency of labor are barely detectable in his deadpan pictures, which are activated by the use of other materials and a non-traditional painting approach.

Pete Pezzimenti’s ability to locate a common denominator within dichotomous artistic vantage points is demonstrated by his contribution of a coy, blocky painting on carpet which muses on high and low brows of modernism. This cobbling together of grandfather influences along with his ripe brand of folk formalism continues to generate his unique visual vernacular.

Steven Stewart and Yasha Wallin are Co-Directors of Freight + Volume in New York.

Special thanks to Nick Lawrence and Freight + Volume, Sasha Noe, Monya Rowe, and Taxter and Spengemann.