GROUP SHOW
February 16 – March 16, 2008 | 11 Rivington St, NY
Caetano de Almeida | John Hodany | Michael Lazarus
Eleven Rivington is pleased to present a three-person exhibition with Caetano de Almeida, John Hodany, and Michael Lazarus. The exhibition is on view from February 16 – March 16, 2007. Working in different, but related media that includes drawing and painting on canvas and panel, sculpture, collage, and painted and cut paper, these three artists mine linked territories and visually optical propensities which are graphically and chromatically charged. Symbolism and abstraction play significant roles, as does precise cutting and pasting, both literal and metaphorical.
Brazilian artist Caetano de Almeida’s Borda series is comprised of modestly scaled works on paper, which are laboriously painted and sometimes perforated with holes. Methodically working with numerous layers of acrylic, these ‘drawings’ borrow from standard linear paper patterns and brightly colored printed fabric normally used in decoration, fashion and packaging. In works such as Exu and Chenile, de Almeida references the colorful textures of woven plastic bags. Through his elaborate and rigorous process, he elevates these banal and ubiquitous objects beyond their functionality and into the realm of the beautiful and personal.
In the work of Berlin and New York based artist John Hodany, drawing, painting, and sculpture combine into complex forms. His often multi-part pieces come together like visual puzzles, with a formulated yet interchangeable geometry and topography. In the large-scale 3-part painting Last Inhabitants (2007), Hodany deploys recognizable elements – a human profile, pigeons, padlocks, and numerous empty boxes – in a flooded underground subway to conjure a seemingly arbitrary narrative that poses as a visual conundrum.
Brooklyn-based artist Michael Lazarus seamlessly brings together collage, painting, and inlay techniques, creating paintings that pulsate and hypnotize. In his new and intimately scaled work, mirrored discs entangle the viewer into the composition, literally reflecting him or her within symbols and patterns, and cut paper collage. Chromatically, they spellbind and poison with acid greens, oranges, blues and reds. Filled with images of masks, skulls, and snakes – all meticulously painted in enamel – they threaten to ensnare one into a dialogue concerning nature and mortality.