NYAB Event - Ron Janowich "Meditations"

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At Howard Scott Gallery
Media: Painting

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Howard Scott Gallery presents the solo exhibition of recent paintings by the New York based artist Ron Janowich.

The works in the show consists of two sizes: The large-scale paintings -10 feet high by 2 feet wide- and the small paintings -20 inches by 10 inches, have a soft arc curve at each end. Regardless of scale, the painting technique and intent remains the same. Janowich uses a glazing technique that echoes back to painters such as Rembrandt where the physical quality of paint is synonymous with a contemplative viewing experience. This technique becomes a radical departure from the flatness of modernism and offers an expanded notion of spatial possibilities for the abstract viewing experience.

Followers of Janowich's work over the last two decades will be aware that he has developed a vocabulary of personalized shapes that support his painting investigations. The most recent paintings are lozenge shaped. This shape provides a strong vertical element as well as arc at each end of the paintings. It allows the painting to be read as an object with a soft interface between the interior space of the painting and the architectural space of the gallery. The viewer is invited to enter the physical perceptual space of the painting and still be aware of his or her own physical presence in the gallery. The paintings are all predominately translucent black and indigo in color with floating white forms that are composed of a multiple layered "woven" space.

In order to achieve an articulated physical presence the paintings rely on a multiple layering of thin tinted paint that gradually creates a dense high-gloss surface that has a depth not unlike what is experienced when looking into a transparent pool of water. The quality of this viewing experience is unique in that it breaks from the traditional flatness of abstraction as well the conventional cubist linear articulation of a painted space. The painter finds a kinship with contemporary artists such as Anish Kapoor and his experiments with reflective experiential space and the spiritual meditative paintings of Shirazeh Houshiary. Historically, painters like Ad Reinhardt as well as Eastern Aesthetics provide grounding for the work.

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