Maus Contemporary
VOLTA NY 2016

beta pictoris gallery / Maus Contemporary will present a curated two artist project at Volta NY 2016, with new paintings by Portuguese artist Manuel Caeiro, and new oil on shaped canvas paintings by African American artist Leslie Smith III.

Manuel Caeiro (b. 1975 in Évora, Portugal; lives and works in Lisbon) studied at the Gabriel Pereira College of Arts, Évora and the University of Fine Arts in Lisbon. His work has been exhibited at the Modern Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Barrié de la Maza Foundation in La Coruña, Spain; and the Contemporary Art Museum, La Coruña, Spain; among others. His work is in the collections of the Culturgest and the PLMJ Foundation, both in Lisbon, Portugal; and the Banco Sabadell in Barcelona, Spain; as well as in private collections in the US, Portugal, Spain, Germany, Turkey, and Belgium.

Caeiro’s first US exhibition, titled M I K A D O , opened on March 18, 2016 at beta pictoris gallery in Birmingham, AL, and recent solo exhibitions include Briefing Room at Ponce+Robles in Madrid, Spain; Totem, at Galeria Lurixs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; and YellowMetric at Galeria Mário Sequeira in Braga, Portugal.

A biography on the artist is forthcoming in the summer of 2016.

Architectural imagery and signage have long been staples of Caeiro’s visual vocabulary. Planes and other geometric shapes are his subjects, along with thin rectangular forms like caution signs. In the works shown at Volta NY, this imagery is inserted into voids, removing the connection to man-made spaces. Instead, these new works function like allegories of painting. Some compositions, with planes like stretched canvases, resemble perilously-arranged artist’s storage; in other works, these painting-like shapes appear to topple like a house of cards. Balance, whether making a house of cards or painting, is one move away from falling apart.

Caeiro has recently made a transformative shift from complex paintings of architectural spaces to increasingly abstract compositions that insert imagery from his previous work into the void. Planes and other geometric shapes are the subjects of these highly-refined pictures which imply man-made spaces, but without specific reference. In his newest body of work, this imagery hangs in the air, suggesting an imaginary space, or a void. These compositions appear to focus on painter's spaces rather than architectural spaces, alternately resembling crowded rows of canvases, artist's loft storage with the room subtracted, or paintings falling like a tumbling house of cards. These works are allegories for the life of a painter, who must contend symbolically and physically with his or her own creations.
The artists explores the limits of architectural forms in his complex abstract paintings. In the works at Volta NY, the shapes and lines of his previous works are extended into increasingly dazzling, and playful, compositions.
Manuel Caeiro's use of color planes resembles the vivid, monochrome geometric works of Minimalist sculptors like Donald Judd. Caeiro's interpretations, however, manipulate the plane, folding it upon itself and appropriating it. This bold move claims the Specific Object as fodder for painting. Caeiro's works make a powerful argument for the primacy of painting; other fields like architecture and sculpture are easily subsumed into imagery for the painter.

Caeiro has shown extensively in his native Portugal as well as Spain and Brazil, and has recently begun to gain recognition beyond the Portuguese and Spanish-speaking world. The work of this exciting mid-career painter has revelatory implications for the continued struggle between painting and sculpture, and beta pictoris gallery is thrilled to introduce his work to a greater audience.

Leslie Smith III was born 1985 in Maryland and grew up in metropolitan Washington, DC, graduated with a BFA degree in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2007, and obtained an MFA degree in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University in 2009.
Since then his work has been included in exhibitions in the US and Europe, such as a solo exhibition at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, Wisconsin; and the Valérie Cassel Oliver curated exhibition Black in the Abstract, Part 2: Soft Curves/Hard Edges at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in Houston, Texas.
His recent solo exhibitions include As I Remembered at beta pictoris gallery in Birmingham, AL; and Living In The Flat Land at Ponce+Robles in Madrid, Spain.

A biography on the artist is forthcoming in the summer of 2016.

Smith explores both the complexity of the non-representational and the expansiveness created by working on non-traditional supports. Not content with being confined by the linearity of the rectangle or the square, Smith explodes the confines of geometry with custom designed shaped canvas supports that would seem accidental were they not so absolutely intentional, their soft edges falling away, drifting, challenging viewers’ expectations and creating tensions that are almost unimaginable. Smith uses this tactic in works of varying scales. His paintings are filled with tension, their surfaces arrayed with the gestures of Smith’s markmaking, their curved edges rolling away, exploring new spaces. Studies in tone and texture, filled with chiaroscuro, subtle plays of both stillness and motion.

Smith’s understandings of pictorial space in abstraction come roaring forward in the new paintings shown at Volta NY: A Better Mouse Trap and Sweet Dreams And Flying Machines, continue this exploration, their surfaces filled with subtle geometric shapes, the paintings literally feel as if they could leap off the wall. Forms seem as if they could reflect, veil and reveal at precisely the same moment as Smith pushes viewers away, holds them close and pulls them through in the same moment. The artist understands the complexities of abstraction and he uses both the surfaces and the structures of his works to create tensions that are palpable.This oscillation between abstraction and the use of concrete forms creates and even more discernible tension within each work.