Legends perform Saturday, May 17th at 7:30

For Jaya Howey, the formal delimitations of Painting provide the space for action, but of a measured and contingent kind. The originary void of blank canvas covered in white gesso does not cry out for color, darkness or pictures. But Howey’s straight lines, pure pigments, and dirty washes draw the landscape of its silence deliberately, precisely, and slowly. They announce their layered sequence plainly, between components that seem purposive but evade a more meaningful identification. These elements obscure one another, threatening the possibility of being arbitrary. As discrete “moves” pile up— another tube of oil paint is chosen, another outlined shape is filled in—a harsh affect forms. The concrete, painterly evidence of decision-making-as-such represents mood as a machine, or the physical domain of the mind’s formless ruler. —Greg Parma Smith

This is Jaya Howey’s third solo exhibition at Taxter & Spengemann. Howey earned his BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1999 and his MFA from Columbia University in 2006. Since that time he has been included in several group exhibitions in New York.