Great show of AbEx-ish paintings by a quite young artist we first noticed about a year ago in a group show at Black and White.

From the press release:

Andrew Piedilato’s large-scale abstract canvases begin with a simple object and end with an act of discovery. Using something mundane like a shoe as a jumping off point, he traces and repeats the shape, stretching and pulling it beyond recognition, leaving only the weight of a traditional figure to sit in the space. Juxtaposing a wide array of mark-making techniques, sections of flat color recede into the background and bold shapes lie on top creating a sense of depth and the loose illusion of a picture plane. Scanning the rich surface of the canvas our eyes can trace the energy of a swirling line, only to get lost in muddy recesses, and be pulled out again by a beacon of electric color.

Rather than imposing ideas onto painting, Piedilato likes the discovery of finding ideas within the creative process. Using his hands to paint, working in poor lighting, sometimes even closing his eyes, are just a few of the devices Piedilato uses to limit his illustrational control over the final composition. He resists further conscious attachment or judgment regarding any particular passage, technique or painting by turning them around for a time returning to them later with fresh eyes. Sometimes he paints over entire canvases with a thick impasto, so that only a specter of the painting that he began with can be seen peaking through. Other times, having run out of paints he has stopped work on a piece returning to it to find that this arrangement of marks is the something unexpected he was looking for. More interested in causing problems than in solving them, Piedilato’s risk-taking methods open the work to chance allowing the possibility of something new to happen.