Galeria Janet Kurnatowski is pleased to present “Suck and Blow”, an exhibition of new paintings by Shane McAdams. The exhibition will be on view from January 16 – February 15, 2009. Please join the artist for an opening reception on Friday, January 16th from 7-9pm.

Shane McAdams’s work looks to process, accident and repetition to guide it. Harnessing basic physical along with the characteristics particular to his materials, his work seeks to stretch the physical limits of those materials by making them perform in ways they weren’t designed to behave.

This new body of work is based on material experiments done with disposable ballpoint pens. Subjecting them to various influences such as blowing, dripping and reactive materials, he has sought to tease out improbable compositions and structures not possible from the hand made mark. McAdams has reacted to these initial experiments, capitalizing on the chance marks by working back into them, creating a visual dialogue between the orderly precision of rendered line and the random and unexpected traces of natural processes. Each piece is coated in resin, which serves both to add UV protection to the ink and to leach and bleed and spread its saturated color.

Interestingly, McAdams’s approach to art-making arose in an attempt to find new territory in his figurative paintings. McAdams began conducting experiments with new materials and mark-making techniques in an attempt to agitate his orthodox approach to painting. In the process he began to relinquish control of brush to a greater and greater degree until withdrawing his hand from his compositions altogether. As a result of this change in approach, his work has become a more perfect analog of naturally occurring formations such as topographies, maps, cellular imagery and cosmic imagery that he coincidentally depicted more literally in his representational work.

McAdams received a MFA from Pratt institute in 2005. This is his second solo show with the gallery. McAdams work has appeared in various group exhibitions in Virginia, San Francisco and New York, galleries including Caren Golden Fine Art, Pace Wildenstein and Denise Bibro Gallery. His work has been reviewed in the Village Voice, The New York Observer and WAGMAG. For more information or images please contact the gallery.