Artists:
Jennifer Bartlett
Heather Bause
Christopher Cascio
Catherine Colangelo
Cheryl Donegan
Jacob El Hanani
Rachel Hecker
Gabriel de la Mora
Tameka Norris
James Radcliffe
Drew Shiflett
James Siena
Michael Toskovich
Claude Viallat

Taking its title from a song by the band LCD Soundsystem, “On Repeat” brings together works by 14 artists who utilize, in incredibly diverse ways, strategies of patterning and repetition. Drawing on a range of influences and techniques, they turn to repeating motifs as a means to excavate and undermine the formal logic of their supports, while frequently incorporating the stuff of everyday life into their art. Turning away from the serial formalism of Minimalism, the artists here frequently embrace the imperfections of the handmade and the rhythmic properties of textiles. Materiality is crucial, as are echoes of 1970s movements such as Supports/Surfaces and Pattern & Decoration.

The exhibition is multi-generational, including well-established figures and emerging artists working in a range of mediums, including painting, drawing, assemblage and printmaking. Among its aims is acknowledging how younger contemporary artists, such as James Radcliffe and Heather Bause, situate their work in dialogue with the Supports/Surfaces group of the 1970s, represented here by veteran French artist Claude Viallat, one of the founders of the movement. Also recovered and reinvented is the Pattern & Decoration movement, which finds echoes in the extravagant patterning of Catherine Colangelo. Following the pioneering work of Jennifer Bartlett, the grid of modernist abstraction is taken apart and remade, often with unconventional materials and irreverent intent by Cheryl Donegan, Rachel Hecker, Gabriel de la Mora, Tameka Norris and Drew Shiflett. In the work of Jacob El Hanani and James Siena, rule-based methods and small-scale formats invite the viewer to an intense, meditative engagement. Chris Cascio and Michael Toskovich playfully twist the legacy of geometric abstract painting to their own ends.

Raphael Rubinstein is a poet and critic known for his influential writings on painting and his book of micro-narratives The Miraculous (Paper Monument, 2014). He is a contributing editor to Art in America magazine and a professor of Critical Studies at the University of Houston School of Art. His awards and honors include Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters from the French government and a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writer grant for his blog, The Silo.

On View: September 9 – November 12, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 9, 6 to 9pm

For more information, please contact Linda Clarke at 713.254.2998, [email protected]