Erin Lawlor: Works on Paper & Jai Llewellyn

Gray Contemporary is pleased to present two exhibitions: Erin Lawlor: Works on Paper in the main gallery, and Jai Llewellyn in the second gallery, on view May 21 – July 2, 2016. Opening Reception: Saturday, May 21, 5:00 – 9:00 pm.

Erin Lawlor’s first solo exhibition at Gray Contemporary presents a series of selected works on paper. Lawlor works with oil in a wet-on-wet technique in which the paintings are produced through diluted layers, worked on the floor.

In a labor-intensive process reminiscent of the Abstract Expressionists, Lawlor works from above the paintings with large broom-like brushes, ever attentive to the incidental, and the evolving internal logic within the painting underway. Within each sweeping motion Lawlor works her way in and out of the intermediary layers of paint, opening a discussion between the multiple skins of both paint and color.

If most of her work is on stretched linen, Erin has a particular rapport to working on paper: “I have been working on paper in parallel to my work on canvas for some years now- initially a choice of practicality, at a time when studio and storage were short, but I was quickly taken with both the challenge of the stark two-dimensionality of the medium, and, perhaps paradoxically, the inherent sensitivity of the surface, which picks up on every subtlety of wash and mark-making. The medium both absorbs, and resists; is tenuous.

For me, the works on paper, rather than being in any way a preparation or study for the canvases, are sort of Ariadne’s thread running alongside, interior works, of both freedom and density, pin-pointing the essential”.

Jai Llewellyn’s exhibition in the Second Gallery is a group of small geometric paintings on canvas. This is the first exhibition of Llewellyn’s work at Gray Contemporary. Llewellyn’s work though painterly has a shared interest with printmaking as well as figurative abstraction. He begins his process by relying on previously worked surfaces as a reference or guide point for decisions pertaining to compositional ideas. Within this process he see’s the work taking on a state of rebirth.

Llewellyn states “I rarely plan or rehearse a piece, working intuitively I allow an image to evolve naturally, to have a life of its own. I am interested in the idea that when something is destroyed another is simultaneously created, as in reincarnation or rebirth”.

Erin Lawlor (b.1969, Epping, England) currently lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include: Maleri.Nu/Paint Now, a solo exhibition at the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek Museum, Denmark (2016); Opening Scene, Galerie Klaus Braun, Germany (solo, 2015); white album, George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco (2015); the seeds of its opposite, Kelvin College, UK (2015); Seven Painters, Arcade Gallery, UK (2015); Peer Review, Blyth Gallery, Imperial College, UK (2015); Erin Lawlor/James Geccelli, Raumx Project Space, England (2015), and London Fields, at George Lawson Gallery, San Francisco (solo, 2015). She has an upcoming solo exhibition at Rod Barton Gallery, Brussels, in June 2016. She is a recipient of a 2016 residency from La Brea Studios in Los Angeles and will also be participating in the Rothko Center painting symposium in Rothko’s city of birth, Daugavpils, Latvia in September of this year.

Jai Llewellyn (b. 1977 London, England) lives and works in Falkirk, UK. He received his BA in Fine Art from Camberwell College of Arts (2003) and his MA in Fine Art from Camberwell College of Arts (2010) Recent exhibitions include: Push, Wright Gallery, Michigan (2015); Boundaries & Divisions, & Collective, Bridge of Allan, UK (2015); Unchartered Territory, The Design Center, Tx (2015); Fife & Dunfermline Printmakers, Edinburgh Art Fair, UK (2014); Fife & Dunfermline Printmakers, St. Andrews Museum, UK (2015); Art Is Good, Wright Gallery, Michigan, (2014); Tempo, Galleria Sangallo, Italy (2014); Pair, Proto Gallery, NJ (2014).

Pictured above: Untitled, 2014, oil on paper, 25.50″ x 19.75″, Erin Lawlor.