Vincent Como “The Negative Approach Operating System (For Intermediate to Advanced Practitioners)”

Minus Space

[Image: Vincent Como "The Negative Approach" (2019) Ballpoint pen on graph paper, 2 framed panels 8 x 10 inches each, 16 x 10 inches overall]

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MINUS SPACE presents the exhibition Vincent Como: The Negative Approach Operating System (For Intermediate to Advanced Practitioners), the established Brooklyn-based artist’s second solo exhibition at the gallery. The exhibition presents a survey of Como’s drawing practice over the past twenty years organized into three specific chapters: In/Accessibility, Multiplicity, and Subtexts.

Working in a broad array of media, ranging from installation to painting to artist books, the core focus of Vincent Como’s artistic practice is the color black, as both a subject of inquiry and a material substance for making art works. The artist draws on divergent concepts from wide-ranging fields, including art history, color theory, astrophysics, science, alchemy, philosophy, religion, mythology, and the occult.

This first part of Como’s exhibition, In/Accessibility, focuses on early, large, and exceedingly labor-intensive monochromatic works made with a ballpoint pen on paper. The second chapter, Multiplicity, showcases interations from his Drawing Subscription project, active from 2011-2017, in which annual subscribers to the series received new works on paper by mail each month of the year. The exhibition will include selections from various series in the project organized around provocative and enigmatic themes, such as Mystical Geometries, Surface Disruption, Dark Continuum, Apparitions, Forbidden Knowledge, Utopiate, Errata, and Repeater.

Subtexts, the final element of the exhibition, Como describes as a “peek behind the curtain…a dense, lengthy, and bastardized footnote, appendix, glossary, or glossolalia for all levels of devotion from the un-initiated to full-fledged adherents alike.” Presented as a dense grid on the wall of 150+ drawings concerning mantras, meditations, missives, and apocrypha, the works are also collected into a thoroughly researched book with footnotes for each individual work on paper. About his oeuvre over the past two decades, Como states, “The common denominator and unifying factor in all of these fields is rooted in some form of belief and the human capacity for prehension”.

Vincent Como (b. 1975, Kittanning, PA; lives Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited his work throughout the United States and abroad, including in Mexico, England, and Austria. Here at the gallery, Como mounted the well-received solo exhibition Paradise Lost in 2013. Last fall he conceived the group show Subvert City, which presented five artists engaged in varied and distinct forms of painterly heresy. His work was included in our recent group exhibitions On Paper (2016), Elements (2015), and Neither Here nor There but Anywhere and Everywhere (2012). He was also included in our survey exhibition MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca: Panorama de 31 artistas internacionales at the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca Alcalá in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2012.

The artist’s other recent solo exhibitions include Spring/Break Art Show (New York), Guest Spot at the Reinstitute (Baltimore, MD), and City Ice Arts (Kansas City, MO). Como has also been included in group exhibitions at Key Projects (Long Island City, NY), DEMO Project (Springfield, IL), Pennsylvania State University (State College, PA), Corridor Projects (Dayton, OH), TSA (Brooklyn, NY), Trestle Projects (Brooklyn, NY), Curious Matter (Jersey City, NJ), Art in General, BRIC Rotunda Gallery, Momenta (all New York), Samson Projects (Boston, MA), Illinois State Museum (Lockport, IL), Western Exhibitions, University of Illinois (both Chicago, IL), Evanston Art Center (Evanston, IL), SPACES (Cleveland, OH), Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), Art Museum of the University of Memphis (Memphis, TN), and House Gallery (Salt Lake City, UT).

Como’s work has been discussed in publications, such as Art 21 Online Magazine, Two Coats of Paint, The Creator’s Project, New American Paintings, The Wall Street Journal, ArtSlant, Progress Report, WagMag, The Boston Phoenix, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Journal, and Salt Lake Tribune, among others. He is a founding member of Tiger Strikes Asteroid, an artist-run space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, with additional locations in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Como holds a BFA in Drawing from the Cleveland Institute of Art (Cleveland, OH).