A pair of exhibitions each in their own manner engage with formula and intuition. In Portraits: Invented Subjects and Divergent Styles, 90 works (all acrylic on paper, 30 x 22 inches, 2015-22) by Nathan Redwood form a tight procession flanking the walls in grids and groups. The overall effect despite a pure onslaught of visual information is holistic; each work is indeed an aesthetic and stylistic universe unto itself, yet crosscurrents of palette, gesture, and patterning motif create just enough continuity to cohere across the panoply. Less a series of actual portraits and more an alibi armature on which to hang years of wild, improvisational, art historical experiments in color and texture. A certain fondness for dusty ecru and radiant teal, a joy taken in rustic pointillism, a special way of mark-making that is neither line nor brushstroke but a fusion of the two — these elements appear and reappear across technicolor harlequins, moody maidens, charismatic characters, and more abstract arrangements of architecture and objects that approach symbolic portraiture.
Nathan Redwood at PRJCTLA, installation view, 2022. Courtesy of PRJCTLA.
In Holy County Line, Senon Williams visits paintings, works on paper, and sculptures that all in some way incorporate text set against either organic color wash grounds or the reworked materiality of found objects, creating a balance of incongruities that are ambiguous but behave as though full of meaning. The eponymous “Holy County Line” (acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches, 2022) offers peachy Agnes Martin-esque atmospherics; “Money for Dope” and “Lay Low Occasion” (acrylic on canvas, 24 x 30 inches, 2022) are darker, evocative of mountain ranges and cloudy skies — the brain wants to articulate the relationship between the image/mood and the text/narrative, and its struggle to do so is, in many ways, the work’s deeper subject. For sculptures, pun-emblazoned benches and flashcard interventions in game sets and freestanding anti-monoliths create moments of humor and subversions of function that serve to both highlight the appeal of repurposed materials and demonstrate that art can live anywhere.
Senon Williams, Holy County Line. Courtesy of PRJCTLA.
Senon Williams, installation view. Courtesy of PRJCTLA.
Nathan Redwood: Portraits Invented Subjects and Divergent Styles
PRJCTLA
May 28, 2022 to July 2, 2022
Senon Williams: Holy County Line
PRJCTLA
May 28, 2022 to July 2, 2022
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