In his first solo show with the gallery, Brent Ridge installs paintings, drawings, sculpture and reliefs of abstracted and silhouetted imagery of the postindustrial landscape to create a narrative about contemporary notions of abstraction and the value of making art.

Relying on a pop art convention, Ridge reconciles the inherent ego of abstraction with primary colors and a respect for representation. Starting with a photograph of his own making, he looks for the iconic in detritus seen in decaying industrial sites: broken glass, debris, chain-link fences, or cast-off objects become source material. Applying hobby-paints and spray-paints he quickly transfers the imagery on to plastics and other non-fine art surfaces. In ³Wired,² wide transparent squiggles painted in the most primary of red pigments intersect evoking the tangled wire originally photographed at a demolition site.

Growing up in a manufacturing town, Ridge was inspired by the labor inherent in art-making. In one piece, particleboard-like material is meticulously cut, painted white and shaped into an image of a broken barricade, and bolted to the wall. Although the work appears spontaneous, each piece is remade or reworked several times in an effort to create a singular piece that closes the gap between the commercially made and the considered.