BILL ADAMS + AUSTIN ENGLISH + SUSUMU KAMIJO: I'VE BEEN MEANING TO SUE FOR SOMETHING
Marvin Gardens is pleased to announce its inaugural exhibition “I’ve Been Meaning To Sue For Something.” Taken from a mistyped sentence in conversation with the artists while planning the exhibition (the intended word was ‘use’ rather than ‘sue’).
Playfully gritty, timely and to-the-point, it aptly characterizes a starting-point from which one could view this group of works. Each artist separately employs a playful use of imagery and materials with an attitude of frankness, while at the same time keeping an eye on a darker psychology. The material processes in the work are openly made visible, no hidden techniques here. Contributions from each artist are also a departure to some extent from what they have been previously known for, or are still practicing in parallel to this grouping.
The sculptures of Bill Adams are in part a new way to explore his long-standing commitment to painting and drawing, which oscillates between varying degrees of abstraction and figuration. Working here with clay, a fresh material for him, and with the energy of open exploration, Adams is able to combine elements familiar to his practice such as the material of paint and the subject of the figure to exciting new ends. Painted gradients are used to describe and confuse space in a different way than in his paintings. Would-be imagistic figurative forms are extended into actual space, on a scale humble in size yet packing a visceral punch that loudly extends into the space they occupy. Bill Adams is also currently presenting a solo exhibition at the University of Kentucky Art Museum, and is in a group show at Kerry Schuss Gallery in New York. Upcoming this June will be another solo show at Jeff Bailey Gallery in Hudson, New York.
The works on paper by Austin English are from two separate stories both written and illustrated by him: “The Disgusting Room” (2010) and “My Friend Perry” (2013). These works are densely additive and often loud with color. Much like the other work in the exhibition, they allow a graduated read from fast and punchy, to an eventual slowing down to an even pulse of well employed details packed into surfaces. English has been exhibited widely over the past few years, most recently in a group show at Asya Geisberg Gallery in New York. His last solo outing, “George Grosz Jr.,” took place at Weird Things, Toronto, Canada in 2015. English’s book, Gulag Casual, was recently published by 2D Cloud.
The panels by Susumu Kamijo are his first series of portraits made after a hiatus in solo work due to a collaborative effort named Robot + Horse. This first sweep back into independent work was made in intense and productive sessions a couple of years ago. Kamijo has been known to slowly swing from aggressive expressionistic works, to very detailed and repetitive process-based images. These pictures are some place in between. The exhibited works display a concise facility with the physical media, mainly acrylic paint, resulting in a hard-won balance between simplicity of form and complexity of image. Humor is evident in these images, and a slow and steady representation of a darker ground prevails in balance with that first read. Marvin Gardens is pleased to be able to round out the show with these solidly charged images which have not been seen since their creation.
