Shannon Finley: END OF LINE

Carrie Secrist Gallery is pleased to announce END OF LINE, our second solo exhibition by Berlin-based gallery artist Shannon Finley. Featuring 17 new paintings and one wall vinyl installation, this exhibition furthers Finley’s exploration of the enigmatic materiality of painting and it’s effect on seeing. This exhibition will be on view from January 18 – March 7, 2020.

Shannon Finley’s exhibition END OF LINE presents a large body of new abstract paintings in a variety of sizes that find their inspiration from variations of past series and directions and a recent trip Finley took to Japan. The resulting compositions are modular in their development with completely new experimental approaches. The process for each painting’s geometric formulation is derived from his artistic intuitive strategies and assistance with moderation from computer software, resulting in a formal complexity that binds the hand to the process.

The paintings on view here are built using layers upon layers of pigment-laced acrylic and acrylic gel medium that are stripped away and added upon, creating a variety of paradoxical tenets. These include opacity and transparency, the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional, the absorption and reflection of light, the fundamentals of color theory and abstraction as expression. The selection of different kinds of compositions on view, from shifting spheres to broken grids and additional geometric constructs can be found throughout this exhibition in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle variations.

The variety of the scale of artwork on view also plays with the geometry of space but in a suited for an experiential interaction. From intimately scaled paintings at 30 x 20 cm to a monumental 15 x 15 foot vinyl wall work, the essence of clarity – and its interloper illusion – counterbalance abstraction. Throughout the exhibition, the transitions of the artwork’s scale allow for viewers to simultaneously become enveloped in these geometric forms or, alternatively, encourage the opportunity to investigate the inscrutable nature of these compositions through a more intimate interaction.

END OF LINE explores process, form, scale, and geometry as separate but equal energies while questioning the paradoxical nature of the state of flux that static imagery can contain.