Casey Kaplan is pleased to announce a special project in Gallery III by New York based artist, Garth Weiser. In anticipation of Weiser’s first solo paintings exhibition with the gallery, scheduled for February 2009, he presents works on paper and a wall based painting. It is the first time that Weiser will display an acrylic wall painting since his participation in “Destroying Athens,” the Athens Biennial, Greece, in 2007.

In a limited palette of cerulean blue, beige, brown and black, Weiser’s works on paper reduce the traditional use of color wheels, gradations and value scales in his paintings to their monochromatic geometric shells. His gradient bands of color become uniform and flat, in some works forming a linear pattern, and the black and white grounds move fluidly between foreground and back. Focusing on the shape and confines of the edge of the paper, he tapes off the same area on each work, defining the drawings with the same underlying framework – a similar affect of the previous figurative substructure within the paintings. Weiser has also devised his own method for spraying paint. Producing concentrations of controlled static, the technique resides somewhere between the precise spray of an airbrush and the fugitive nature of hand-controlled splatter.

Weiser’s black wall painting isolates a singular technique prominent in his large-scale canvases. Beginning by taping off a section of the wall, he thickly applies acrylic paint with a putty knife. He then combs through the surface to create different sized striations. The resulting wide and narrow wales abut in a shattered collection of individual facets. As the viewer moves, the light reflects off the textured segments creating a perceived undulation of geometric form.

Using reductive techniques, Weiser’s drawings and wall painting isolate varying aspects of his canvases and articulate them in new form. The juxtaposition of the frontal, flat, geometric abstractions and a three-dimensional, bas-relief space demonstrates Weiser’s ongoing interest in the disparate formal languages of painting.

Garth Weiser’s recent group exhibitions include: “Recent Acquisitions,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois, 2008; “Not So Subtle Subtitle,” curated by Matthew Brannon, Casey Kaplan, New York, 2008; “Destroy Athens,” The Athens Biennial, Greece, 2007; “Greater New York,” PS1 MoMA, Long Island City, New York, 2005. The artist will participate in the forthcoming exhibition: “The Triumph of Painting; Abstract America,” Saatchi Gallery, London, England.