Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery is pleased to present new work by Jonathan Callan and Jason Tomme in a show running from January 23 – February 28, with an opening reception on Friday, January 23, from 6 – 8 p.m.

Through varied but complimentary investigations of time, space and materiality, Callan and Tomme morph quotidian visual encounters into experiential objects. Their works are to be encountered not only visually but also viscerally, unraveled from routine positions.

By reworking the surfaces of found books and printed matter, Jonathan Callan investigates the inherent physicality of a text. Works such as Entertaining (2007-8), isolate graphic details from commercial food photography to create a new taxonomy of form within manipulated surfaces. Re-purposed from their original function, details floating within heavily erased paper grounds become strangely haunting. Book covers, incised geometrically and hybridized, create organic, multi-colored abstractions of faded cloth. These reductive edits remove the texts’ underlying narrative structure while allowing another kind of cultural story to unfold.

Jason Tomme forms ontological inquiries into location, displacement, and abstraction using what the artist has termed “disrupted minimalism.” Created during a Chinati Foundation residency in Marfa, Texas, the paintings and sculpture on view are subtly connected to the desert landscape. At the same time, these works re-imagine our relationship to objects firmly embedded in culture. In his “crack paintings,” Tomme obliterates the figural trace in art historical canvases and mars the resulting luminous, imprecise spaces with hand-painted fissures, introducing a palpable human element. Paired with a wall text, his sculptures perform a similar contradiction. Originally discarded stage props, these “rocks on wheels” are mute objects brought into dialogue with their culturally loaded origins. By adding and subtracting formal layers, Tomme achieves a level of uniformity that he then interrupts, creating a new record of time and space.

Jonathan Callan lives and works in London and has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. His solo exhibitions include Kudlek Van der Grinten, Cologne 2008; Grusenmeyer Gallery, Deurle, Belgium, 2007; and the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, 2005. Callan is included in numerous collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York, The British Museum, London, The Henry Moore Institute, South London Gallery, London, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester and The Ferens Art Gallery, Hull. This is his third exhibition at the gallery.