303 Gallery is proud to present our tenth exhibition of new work by Rodney Graham. Working since the early 1980s across the disciplines of video, painting, sculpture, photography, performance, installation, and music, Graham's work stages layered narratives suffused with cultural and historical signifiers.
For this occasion he presents a series of new large-scale paintings - bold, abstract works filled with movement and depth, and imbued with reflexive details from Graham’s own history of painting. Contorted shapes, dots, and lines and blocks of rich, natural hues are contrasted with bright pastels, resulting in compositions that nod to Graham’s varied interests, and his sense of humor.
“I have been painting, or experimenting with painting, for about 20 years. These paintings, all oil and sand on linen, evolved out of prop paintings which reimagined modernist works from the late forties, which I did for my photographic work Vacuuming the Gallery 1949 (2018) from my last show at 303 Gallery.
The new paintings employ something of the formal vocabulary of these props, but I have added elements from other painting ‘experiments’ I have made over the years: dots from a series of cylindrical relief works, drips from the photographic work The Gifted Amateur, Nov.10th, 1962 (2007), odd shapes from the Psychomania Variations (2010) and from the relief series Possible Abstractions (2007). All of these elements become distorted and altered to the point of being largely unrecognizable through the many computer studies I have made over time, arriving at the final compositions by way of a collage technique.” - Rodney Graham
Rodney Graham: Paintings will open at 303 Gallery on February 25th, and will be on view through April 1st, 2022.