NYAB Event - Jeff Muhs “Slipstream”

Jeff Muhs “Slipstream”

Lyons Wier Gallery

This event has ended.

Slipstreaming is synonymous with drafting, whereby two moving objects are caused to align in a close group reducing the overall effect of drag due to exploiting the lead object’s slipstream. In the case of Jeff Muhs, a slipstream is created visually by the foreground elements that seemingly leave a swirling area of atmospheric turbulence in its wake. This effect is heightened by the artist’s cognitive choices of color and how the paint is applied.

Like many of the Action and Gesture painters before him, Muhs uses a variety of painting techniques including, but not limited to, dripping, smearing and pouring of paint. The backgrounds are typically black paint that is moved around resembling the whiting out of windows during times of construction or closure. This technique is then over-painted by a dense and colorful mass that calls to mind landscape and Color Field elements. When combined, the push and pull of the eye, causes the viewer to slip between the two disparate yet synthesized elements – welcome to the slipstream!

The black and white swirling masses are grounded by the opaque denseness of the foreground elements. This oscillation between background and foreground allows the viewer to move in and out and through the matrix of paint. The paintings also afford areas where the eye can rest, areas of deep space to float around in, as well as rich islands of color to float upon the work’s surface. It is while the eye is at rest, when the turbulence ceases and we are lost in the work, that the true beauty of the work is divulged. It is at crossroad of intentions and chance, where color and motion are freed from an objective context and becomes the subject itself. Herein lies the poetic gesture of Slipstream, the subtle and profound bridge between abstraction and reality, color and content, nature and man.

Jeff Muhs received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City in 1988. His work can be found in several private and public collections, namely Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Hunter Museum, Memphis, TN, Ward Museum, Salisbury, MD, Time Warner, Inc., New York, NY, Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV, and Cantor Fitzgerald among others. He lives and works in Southampton, NY. This is his second solo exhibition with the gallery.