John Connely presents

www.johnconnellypresents.com


John Connelly presents
Augusto ArbizoTauba AuerbachJeff ElrodKim FisherDana FrankfortDaniel HesidenceAlex KwartlerCarrie MoyerElizabeth NeelRaha RaissniaWendy WhiteMichael Zahn
Late Liberties - on view from July 12 through August 24, 2007 - presents an inclusive survey of recent abstract painting, works on paper, and sculpture by a dozen of artists – including seven women painters – from New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Works in this thematic exhibition include soft and hard-edge paintings, gestural and ‘expressionistic’ abstractions, as well as shaped and chromatically engaged ‘painted’ sculpture. Late Liberties is organized by artist and curator Augusto Arbizo in collaboration with John Connelly.
For a young artist to be making work at this moment in what could be called an abstract or non-representational manner, be it vaguely gestural, lyrical, or geometric in mode, is consciously or not, a highly personal and political act. With few exceptions, the history of the last 15 years has largely shunned modes of abstraction. Much maligned and critiqued – and often used as strategy for conceptually based work – it has been largely banished to the sidelines by an art world enthralled by photography, installation, animation and romantic figuration.
But modes are cyclical and thus a younger generation of artists has found that the more outmoded the approach, the more dangerous – and exciting – a territory it becomes. It is a loaded terrain that offers fissures and openings for freedom and personal manifestation – from the seemingly clinical and sedate to the unabashedly seductive. The works in this exhibition range from computer derived to text and design based to nature inspired, running the gamut from geometric compositions to loosely brushed fields of color. Disparate ideas concerning technology, fashion, art theory, wildlife and science, and pop culture, among others, inform the work. Furthermore, a commitment to the refined and handpainted becomes obvious, whether painstakingly cut, stenciled and ‘constructed’ or intuitively brushed and dripped. All the artists will be creating new work specifically for this exhibition and each one will be given his / her own wall. Looking at abstraction today makes it clear that it is a completely different exercise than it was for earlier generations. Ezra Pound’s famously quoted mandate to ‘make it new’ apparently still fits the bill, but for today’s artists it is a risky, perilous and rousing proposition – offering Late Liberties.