Tony Just
10 Mar - 05 Apr 2012
TONY JUST
Sentimental Agitprop
10 March – 5 April, 2012
Sommer & Kohl are pleased to present the second solo exhibition with new works by Tony Just (*1969, USA).
This new series of paintings is made without a brush. Tony Just uses the stretched canvas as a brush by dragging one painting across another – like Rorschach tests, only smeared, in motion.
This process highlights the inherent qualities in the materials used, the wrinkles and structures of the paint carrier – be it canvas, tarpaulin or PVC sheeting. Patterns form through the folds or the pressure applied when putting the paintings in contact with one another. These images are random and chaotic and based on chance.
The matt black gesso paint counteracts the glossy texture of the tarpaulin and the surface of the canvas. This is a reverse process from what we normally think of as painting, where the background is of matt gesso and the paint brings the gloss and structure. The pictures start to resonate, to vibrate the eye in that they play with what is background and what is foreground, and it is easy to imagine things within their abstraction.
Although these works have the physical appearance of paintings they are equally recording an action or dynamic event on canvas – documents of a gesture in the truest sense.
Sentimental Agitprop
10 March – 5 April, 2012
Sommer & Kohl are pleased to present the second solo exhibition with new works by Tony Just (*1969, USA).
This new series of paintings is made without a brush. Tony Just uses the stretched canvas as a brush by dragging one painting across another – like Rorschach tests, only smeared, in motion.
This process highlights the inherent qualities in the materials used, the wrinkles and structures of the paint carrier – be it canvas, tarpaulin or PVC sheeting. Patterns form through the folds or the pressure applied when putting the paintings in contact with one another. These images are random and chaotic and based on chance.
The matt black gesso paint counteracts the glossy texture of the tarpaulin and the surface of the canvas. This is a reverse process from what we normally think of as painting, where the background is of matt gesso and the paint brings the gloss and structure. The pictures start to resonate, to vibrate the eye in that they play with what is background and what is foreground, and it is easy to imagine things within their abstraction.
Although these works have the physical appearance of paintings they are equally recording an action or dynamic event on canvas – documents of a gesture in the truest sense.