EXHIBITION IMAGES | WORKS | PRESS RELEASE
MICHAEL DELUCIA, BRYAN GRAF & KATE SHEPHERD
August 24 -September 8, 2013
HALSEY MCKAY GALLERY is pleased to present Ether Scrims, Dark Rooms and Calculative Planes, a three-person exhibition featuring the work of Michael DeLucia, Kate Shepherd, and Bryan Graf. Combining virtual and analog interventions in photography, painting and sculpture these three artists animate deliberations of geometry, pattern and computation. Misinformation that occurs in translating virtual, linear and spatial forms onto the surfaces of physical, two-dimensional planes lends itself to subtle optical illusions in each of these artist’s work.
Image: Detail from Bryan Graf, Lattice Ambient, 2013, unique photogram
Bryan Graf explores the opposing forces of control and chance through methods of repetition, inversion and accumulation. He applies lo-fi processes, and an experimental approach to light sensitive materials to create unique, camera-less photograms. Using common household screen materials as an agent to illustrate the force of structure, Graf undermines the orderly machinated pattern of their mesh by staging situations in the darkroom. The results are flattened indexical atmospheres–photographs of real, physical spaces that appear abstract or as the imaginary product of what we commonly recognize as computer-generated imagery.
Inversely, Michael DeLucia begins inside the abstract workspace of his computer and moves out into corporeal space. Using 3D modeling software, DeLucia builds geometric abstractions which are compressed to low relief and carved in plywood with the help of a computer controlled router. While a classical sculptor in tune with his material he looks to unveil the object preordained within, DeLucia’s work reveals a discord between a parasitic object and its host material which seems to have forced itself upon it. To experience this work is to understand that they are objects that have happened to the materials. Like a UFO that parks momentarily in a cornfield, these abstract objects leave a scarred impression in their new world. The router follows the contours of the virtual object undiscerning of solid or space. When it happens to intersect with matter it scribes gouges or tears through its paths which ultimately weave a matrix of fluted marks. The wood, which is stressed to its limits in spots, buckles and is obliterated. In a gesture that reclaims the object from the latency of technology, the routed sheets are assembled into sculptures in real space whose surfaces are simultaneously windows into the abstract workspace where they were born.
Kate Shepherd also begins in the computer’s illusionistic space, drawing with architectural and animation software. Where DeLucia brings a carved touch to digital information, Shepherd reaches further analog and transcribes her virtual renderings by hand. In her distinctive approach, Shepherd applies fine lines of white oil paint upon monochromatic layers of glossy enamel. The gleam and polish of Shepherd’s surfaces are the mark of her deft handling of paint executed beyond the precision of machine manufacturing. With Shepherd’s Interference paintings, she covers over a chromatic surface, then “pokes through to it” in an aleatory process of throwing random elements on the surface and wiping them away. This leaves behind the remnants of activity to which she adds a linear image made as a response to the placement of these colored points, starting with a grid of lines and gradually wiping away until a form feels solid. To Shepherd, her minimalist designs necessarily recall familiar namable figures and explore literal and metaphorical aspects of space and architecture. The paintings themselves—composed on large wood panels—bear an architectural presence felt throughout the exhibition oftentimes by reflecting the space where they reside.
Bryan Graf lives and works in Portland, Maine and New Jersey. He received an M.F.A from Yale University in 2008 and a B.F.A. from the Art Institute of Boston in 2005. His work was recently featured in Second Nature: Abstract Photography Then and Now at the Decordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and will be on display this spring in The Polaroid Years: Instant Photography and Experimentation at the Loeb Art Center at Vassar College. Conveyor Press released his first monograph, Wildlife Analysis, in March 2013.
Michael DeLucia was born in Rochester, New York, in 1978. He lives and works in Brooklyn. After studying art at the Rhodes Island School of Design in 2001, he took a further degree in sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London, graduating in 2004. His works have entered prestigious private collections and have been exhibited at CRAC Alsace, at the Sculpture Center in New York, at the MetroTech Center in Brooklyn and at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit. He is represented by Eleven Rivington in New York City
Kate Shepherd lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work is featured in numerous museum collections, including the Phillips Collection; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Indianapolis Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of the Arts; Des Moines Art Center; and Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. She is represented by Galerie Lelong in New York City.