Jack Shainman Gallery is pleased to announce Bubbles and Snowmen, an exhibition of new paintings and drawings by Todd Hebert. For his first solo exhibition at the gallery Hebert focuses, as the title implies, on a figure familiar to anyone acquainted with his previous work-the snowman. Working with acrylic on canvas and paper Hebert employs the airbrush to create his ethereal landscapes. White and winter-sky-blue dominate his palate, and are supplemented by hints of browns and greens that flush out horizon lines or touches of pink and yellow that add shimmer to bubbles. Bubbles miraculously appear and float across the compositions-canvases that range in size from 8 foot square to one foot high by 12 feet wide, and multi-paneled framed works composed of paper and canvas.

Inspired as much by the accessibility of the snowman as by its human-like qualities, Hebert exploits this icon’s ability to hold attention not only in the instance of viewing but after. Hebert’s snowmen stay with the viewer for elusive reasons, whether it is their simplicity of form or associations to whimsy and childhood. They stand boldly in otherwise empty landscapes making them stoic, faceless and ambiguous.

Hebert’s paintings are full of dualities that do not allow for easy interpretation. From this elusiveness, simple subject matter is allowed to expand in the viewer’s mind and make a lasting impression. Hebert’s subject matter and painting technique then go hand in hand. His use of airbrush gives his paintings a smooth easy looking surface. It is with great skill and attention that Hebert creates this quality, panning the surface of the canvas to create the perfectly blurred and balanced image. What results is a hazy, fuzzy landscape that is not easily absorbed by the viewer’s retina. Instead the viewer’s gaze is in constant motion as if the painting was arising from his gaze. One imagines they are watching the artist in action moving his spray gun back and forth, repeatedly, without rest.

Hebert’s work explores perception and space. He is a painter’s painter who has simplified his technique and subject matter over the past few years in order to perfect his technical practice and augment our ability to see. His use of common and universal imagery allows for easy entry by the art connoisseur and the layman alike.

Todd Hebert earned his BFA from the University of North Dakota in 1996, and his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998. He has been a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA; and the Core Program, Glassell School of Art, in Houston, TX. In 2005 he was awarded the Emerging Artist Award Exhibition at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. Hebert has exhibited his work in numerous group exhibitions nationally including Modest Sublime, Carpenter Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 2006; We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads, Freight + Volume Gallery, New York, NY 2006; and The Eclectic Eye: Selection of Fantasy and Illusion from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Contemporary Art Center, New Orleans, LA, 2007. Most recently his work was included in the exhibition Some Paintings: LA Weekly Annual Biennial, curated by Doug Harvey at Track 16 & Smart Art Press, Santa Monica, CA.