CITY LIMITS — Park Place Gallery Brooklyn

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City Limits is a group exhibition focusing on seven artists that mine the formal structure of the grid, but with wildly disparate outcomes. All of these artists create their work within the urban environment or just outside of it, allowing this particular landscape with its gridded out street system to shape and inform their work.

New York City was one of the first cities to implement a rigid street grid system on a grand scale, shaping it’s unique character (from the early 1800’s into the present) and inhabitants. The grid system provides some measure of order in a city that must come face to face with chaos and chance on a daily basis. The artists in this this exhibition have placed that same geometric construct into their compositions, but making allowance for chance and surprise in their work. City Limits aims to stretch what it means to work from the grid and its connection with the rectangle or square, pushing these artists into a multitude of visual vocabularies.

Kerri Ammirata implements powerful centrality, euphoric mark making, and exquisite color into her work. The Triad, one of Ammirata’s paintings, was inspired by Fra Angelico’s “Annunciation.” Back in 2006, the artist visited the Covent of San Marco where the masterpiece was painted and later incorporated that into her work. On her relationship to the grid, Ammirata says she see’s “the grid as a place to open our senses; to expand our limitations. It allows us to hold contradictions together at the same time. It dissolves the space between the mind (logic) and the heart (spirit).”

Lauren Comito works from flattening packaging material until it forms a pleasing form that she can expand upon in her works on paper and paintings. Finding usable shapes in the flattened material is only the beginning, from there - she turns these forms into otherworldly forms that reference alien life, the human body and psychedelic poster art from the 1960’s and 70’s. Her connection with the grid is paramount: eye balls, body parts, mouths, faces all fall within highly symmetrically conceived compositions. Amongst these forms, multiple portal shapes that are centrally located throughout her paintings beckon the viewer closer. Reflecting on her paintings and drawings, Comito says, “in my work the grid is a matrix from which to build. I explore the geometric relationships between shapes derived from everyday items to create blueprints for new structures. The paintings are abstract and suggestive, which creates an openness and slippage of perception.”

Ryan Dawalt’s recent works “explore the phenomenon surrounding the architecture of LCD screens and optics of streaming light patterns.” For Dawalt, he says the grid “fosters invention through repetition. The grid is conceptually binary and can be both centrifugal and centripetal. Repetition is a type of definitive statement - yet, in the context of the grid, can also remain silent.” On the nature of color in his surfaces, the artist states “my surface color employ complex scatter patterns of ferromagnetic pigments and on occasion invoke bedding, furniture cushions, and the body.” Dawalt’s luminous work brings to mind a lush bed of summer grass, deep sea ocean life, and the sublime minimalism of Brice Marden.

Robert Otto Epstein masterfully blends 8 bit 1980’s Nintendo graphic design, American sports, and intricately built up figurative and abstract forms from only quarter inch sized blocks of color. Epstein paints line by line on panel, consistently referencing the grid and the outer perimeter of his compositions with every block added. Epstein’s focused painting technique continuously reverses the hierarchy of his figure and background relationships, the viewer is repeatedly asked to consider both subject choices as equals. The contrast of power and restraint are visible for all to see in this artist’s work.

Jeff Fichera’s glowing abstracted series titled “Variations,” are based on a small holographic gift bag. Fichera was entranced with the play of light and mystery such a humble object could give off. The artist chose to use the holographic qualities of the bag’s material, but to flatten that effect onto a rigidly laid out grid system on wood panels. These individual panels have the effect of being lit by a massive generator, lighting them from within. When stacked together, the isolated panels almost become dissolved of their edges as their oscillating internal forms bleed into each other, creating an effect of a shimmering surface. Amidst this vibrant kinetic play of light and color, Fichera never loses the structure of the grid, it’s always there providing order and stability within this world of dancing electric light.

Simon Slater’s series titled “Summer L.A. Divorce (Self-Portraits)” are seemingly childlike paper woven quilts that become more and more sophisticated the longer one views them. There is a homespun arts and crafts feeling with Slater’s work, mingled with a punk rock band flyer aesthetic, David Hockney’s California sun drenched portraiture, and the cartoon imagery of Philip Guston. This pieces showcases the artist examining himself front and center, but he still mysteriously camouflages his subject matter, allowing the colorful paper tiles to jostle for the viewer’s attention. The grid literally weaves it's way in and out of these intimate portraits, but with a painterly swagger that reads like a bad hangover on a scale of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Christina Sucgang’s paintings are meditative constructions that contrast the power of a lively primary colored organic line (or lines), which playfully move through a complex gridded background (often multicolored with subtle earthier tones). The surface tension is palpable when Sucgang’s gestural line is offset and blurred by the background swatches of gridded tile like pieces. Viewing Sucgang’s work, you can see everything from references to the gritty NYC subway tiles to the cool reserve of Agnes Martin’s mid-century masterpieces. Reflecting on the grid, Sucgang states, “the grid sets up the guide and parameters in my work. Within the grid, I find the forms, patterns and color in which to transcend the image and allow the painting to come through.”