TACT-TRACTION
Works by STEPHANIE CAMPOS, ETHAN GREENBAUM and ERIC HIBIT
September 8 - October 21, 2006
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8th from 6-8pm
"Tact-Traction" on Saatchi Gallery Blog by Doug McClemont
AnnaKustera is pleased to present tact-traction, a three-person show of abstract paintings by Stephanie Campos, Ethan Greenbaum, and Eric Hibit, opening on September 8 and continuing through October 21, 2006.
Working outside of the fashionable “feel good figuration” genre so prevalent in today’s New York art world, these three young artists make abstract paintings that riff on or eliminate the “picture” space preferring to highlight a more three dimensional, “tact”-tile surface. In their hands, paint becomes a sculptural object, which can be layered, excavated or collaged along with other materials. The painting’s facade becomes the bedrock for a variable construction site of texture, color, and form.
With an emphasis on the physicality of their respective materials, these artists create work that is in essence a microcosm of abstract painting strategies minus any particular deference or overt irony. They demonstrate a continued dedication to and the vitality of abstraction in contemporary art.
STEPHANIE CAMPOS’ reductive compositions and palette belie more complex visual intents. Black, white, beige and red paint is thickly applied to the surface and sculpted into forms that recall the paintings of Myron Stout or Piet Mondrian. However, it is the artist’s impasto application that subverts the historically smoother and hard-edged forms of her predecessors allowing for updated notions of geometric refinement.
Stephanie Campos’ paintings have been included in numerous group shows in New York, including ‘TM/GS: CD/ SC’ at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery this past Spring and ‘Girls Gone Wild’ at Bronwyn Keenan Gallery (2003). Stephanie is a MFA graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2000) and lives in New York.
View Image's of Stephanie Campos' Work
Referencing architecture, signage and early 20th Century abstraction, ETHAN GREENBAUM paintings are records of accumulation and distillation. He juxtaposes the decaying urban landscape (its buildings and its inhabitants) with the gleaming, hopeful geometry of new construction. Alternating between sculpting and painting, Greenbaum literally constructs his figures and cityscapes from such varied material as foam, resin, and sintra plastic. Combined with paint, they create fields of texture and brightly hued color that allows “for an exploration of how the physical landscape shapes individual psychology and identity”.
Ethan Greenbaum is a recent MFA graduate of Yale University (2005) and debuted his work last Fall in a two person show at the Buia Gallery. Ethan lives in Brooklyn, NY.
View Image's of Ethan Greenbaum's Work
ERIC HIBIT energetic canvases bombard the viewer with explosions of texture and high key color. Passages of line, depictions of deeper space, and quotations from the lexicon of abstract painting are intertwined, overlapped, and coalesced with sculptural elements to create an engaging visual playground. Hibit’s paintings subvert and redefine pictorial space; making a visual commentary on notions of creation and entropy. Their large scale disorients the viewer leaving them to wonder whether they have tumbled into or are being flung out of a chaotic and vibrant world of the artist’s creation.
Eric Hibit is a MFA graduate of Yale University (2003) and was included in the ‘Toxic’ exhibition at the Max Protetch Gallery (2003). Eric lives in Brooklyn, NY.
View Image's of Eric Hibit's Work
AnnaKustera 520 West 21 Street New York NY 10011 tel 212 989 0082 fax 212 989 0456 www.annakustera.com
For additional information please contact the gallery at 212-989-0082.