NEOGEONEOGEO

JOHNNY ABRAHAMS, ELISE FERGUSON, SARAH HOTCHKISS, JONATHAN RUNCIO, KEVIN UMAÑA & NANCY WHITE

OPENING RECEPTION:
THURSDAY, JANUARY 18TH
5:00 - 8:00PM

EXHIBITION DATES:
JANUARY 18 - MARCH 2, 2024

At a time when figurative painting has taken center stage, the question could be asked: where have all the abstract artists gone? Romer Young Gallery presents NEOGEONEOGEO an exciting exhibition of bold, colorful work by six contemporary artists exploring the art of geometric abstraction: Johnny Abrahams, Elise Ferguson, Sarah Hotchkiss, Jonathan Runcio, Kevin Umana, and Nancy White. There will be an opening reception for the artists on Thursday, January 18th from 5-8pm.

NEOGEONEOGEO is both a visual pun as well as a playful commentary on the nature of categorizing and naming art movements in the first place. Like a double negative inverted -- a double positive producing the opposite for rhetorical effect -- NEOGEONEOGEO plays with the idea that maybe neoneo is not emphatically newnew, but rather, neoneo is nothing and everything at the same time. This musing jeux de mots is really about a show that is a suggestive catchall of everything and nothing being abstract at the same time.

Without a singular thread, Romer Young Gallery considers this current movement of geometric abstraction as held together by a playful, rhizomatic, and connected “network of multiplicities.” The artists in the exhibition find inspiration in a complete cross-pollinating, mash-up of artistic explorations: minimalism, suprematism, constructivism, neoplasticism, concrete art, and so many more. From mess and order, organic and geometric, thin and thick, matte and sheen, hard and soft, NEOGEONEOGEO fuses together a patchwork of motifs, influences, references and ideas. NEOGEONEOGEO does away with the Neo-Geo movement’s cool calculation, and heralds the return of expressive energy and an invitation for play. As one of the artists once said, “start anywhere, it doesn’t matter.”

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INSTALLATION IMAGES:

Johnny Abrahams’ paintings are abstractions that refer to form, structure, and architecture. Composed of thick impasto paint resulting in surfaces that have a seductive, vinyl-like quality. The tooth of his custom made brushes leaves thick reliefs of oil paint stratified on the tall canvases. These strokes are met with exacting vertical and curvilinear voids that reveal the raw canvas beneath. His smaller, more intimate paintings subtly reveal a surface textured with the knubby irregularity of the burlap, and thick paint acting as a record of the unpredictable rubbing of the oil stick. Colorful underpainting pushes through to the surface where adjacent colors meet in a soft, blended haze. Deceptively simple, Abrahams’ paintings are charged with imperfection. Much of the energy in these paintings can be discovered in the collision of their precision with their tolerance for play.

Elise Ferguson uses pattern and color, along with a range of process-driven approaches and modern materials, to create works based on mathematical puzzles and geometric variations that land somewhere at the intersection of painting, sculpture and printmaking. Using pigmented plaster on panel, the plaster is painstakingly trowelled on - layer upon layer to nearly sculptural levels, in the end building up as many as 30 layers. A buildup of glitches is created, resulting in works that embrace their inherent materiality and celebrate their irregularity. The results are beautiful works that reflect the artist’s intuitive use of geometry.

Sarah Hotchkiss makes “geometric paintings that reference found graphics like board games, puzzles, book covers, calibration patterns and optical illusions. Drawn to imagery that may serve a utilitarian function, but inadvertently doubles as art, her acrylic, gouache and Flashe paintings use hard-edged graphic qualities and color combinations that result in scintillating optical effects. The pieces don’t conceal their origins, but playfully build their own systems of self-contained logic that are pleasurable to untangle.”

Jonathan Runcio’s series of sculptural paintings are born out of the eroding geometries found in our built environment. The works, executed in steel and paint, pull from the vernacular architecture of the everyday and reflect a “vivid, ordered, beautiful cityscape that has the potential to exist everywhere, for everyone.” Storefronts, apartment buildings, garages, factories and gates become poetic abstractions, where motifs are extrapolated, transforming our relationship to the world around us.

Kevin Umaña’s hybrid paintings merge glazed ceramics and painting on canvas, extending his previous concentration on abstract geometric paintings. Umaña’s affinity for architecture, design and color theory informs the distinct patterns and repetitive structures that create a sense of rhythm in each painting. His recent work investigates the history of the Pipil people—the Indigenous group of his family ancestry—native to the western and central areas of present-day El Salvador. Fusing together conflicting styles, his textured, abstract representations evoke specific places from his childhood, memories of nature, beaches, plants, construction materials, food and religion.

Nancy White’s powerfully understated paintings on linen engage with painting’s most basic elements: color, shape, and composition. The paintings veer toward the monochromatic, yet evoke an expansive range of temperatures and sensations. From a seemingly singular, muted color family, White creates an intensity and diversity of hues. Each painting practices a kind of slow reveal. Together, the unassuming works invite an intimate experience, while simultaneously exerting a physical presence on the viewer that is ambiguous and unexpectedly expansive.

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