Morgan Lehman Gallery
535 West 22nd Street, 6th floor, 212-268-6699
Chelsea
July 9 - August 7, 2009
Reception: Thursday, July 9, 6 - 8 PM
Web Site
Morgan Lehman presents Superfine, a group show featuring artists whose work focuses on minute details, controlled line, and meticulous concentrated repetition. Drawings, paintings, and mixed media works on paper from fifteen contemporary artists investigate a variety of ways to utilize patience, perseverance, and dedication to achieve both definitive and abstract outcomes. Superfine combines works that read as visual meditation, indulgence in imagery, and meticulous rendering.
Superfine includes the work of Joseph Ayers, Eric Beltz, Iona Rozeal Brown, Paul Chiappe, Linn Meyers, Tom Molloy, Aaron Noble, Hilary Pecis, Julia Randall, Katia SantibaƱez, Andrew Schoultz, Rachel Thorlby, Aya Uekawa, Ryan Wallace, and Michael Waugh.
Over the top, elaborate, and excessive could all be used to describe the work included in the show. Superfine draws together artists whose work demonstrates an externalization of our image driven culture, for example Aaron Noble’s drawings and paintings of collaged comic book fragments, as well as an extraction from definitive imagery and obsession to individual process, as in Linn Meyers’ meditative line drawings that begin with a single line that is endlessly redrawn around itself – for Superfine, Meyers’ will have a site specific wall drawing included in the exhibition.
In today’s fast-paced, digital world, people rarely seem to have time for detail. These artists address the mainstream attention span of today and seek to extricate and invigorate it. They all share an ability to pull the viewer to a closer examination through their own scrutiny and process. In The Election Reform Commission (part II), Michael Waugh uses ink on Mylar to create micrographic drawings – utilizing minute letters and words to form an image. At a close range, the viewer has the opportunity to read the words and at a distance, the mass of the letters become a shifting tonal range creating the imagery. Waugh uses politics and the rhetoric of official history to create an association between expansive meaning and the intricate details.
Hilary Pecis’ elaborate depictions of fantastical futuristic landscapes blend graphite patterning with abstracted collage imagery of jewels, fabrics, and textures. Futuristic cave-like spaces from another planet provide a kaleidoscopic perspective creating a space for one to be saturated in its complexity.
Sphere of Influence (No. 14), by Tom Molloy, is composed of a US dollar bill cut in the form of a global map and exemplifies an investigation into the relationship of process and time versus money and its global importance. His scrutiny of contemporary geopolitical conditions could be an attempt to inspire a closer look at the patterns and dependencies of one’s actions and role in the current state of affairs.