James Verbicky is renowned for what he calls “media paintings”, large sculptural assemblages of Baltic birch wood covered in vintage advertisements for popular brands and imagery from foreign magazines bought along the Seine in Paris. He arranges the layers of paper in a horizontal grid, paying homage to pioneering Modernists and Minimalists such as Piet Mondrian, Kenneth Noland, and Morris Louis. A resin topcoat renders the surface shiny and the paper transparent, so that the images on the backsides bleed through to the front, creating a sense of depth. Paying attention to what is behind each piece of paper “makes the collage more interesting and creates a certain mood,” he says. Verbicky’s collages, which can be “read” in any direction, evoke familiar scenes and subjects, from flowers in bloom, to a racetrack blurred in action, to stock tickers scrolling across a television screen.