DEBBI KENOTE & ZURIEL WATERS: Reverse Reverb

Marvin Gardens is pleased to present Reverse Reverb, a two-person exhibition of shaped works on canvas featuring Debbi Kenote and Zuriel Waters. The Brooklyn based painters have honed in on two very distinct ways to literally stretch the boundaries of paintings. Both display a command of carefully chosen color, building compositions that play with space laterally: Kenote’s stretched canvas-structures reference the center of the work with angular movements radiating outward and pointing inward, depending on the reading of the viewer. While Waters’ tactile, flat objects display bulbous and curving forms protruding laterally from a central cross or square. Both seem to embody a history of textile and dye, although Waters’ surfaces are all custom paint mixtures lending to that effect, and the method of pinning to the wall also suggests how a carpet is displayed. Kenote applies archival pigments to achieve atmospheric dyed backgrounds onto which biomorphic shapes are then painted. These forms enhance and at times contradict the rigid custom supports over which the painting is stretched. Seen in the same space the conversation between the two artists is palpable, almost like sound waves radiating from the centers of their compositions, complementing each other in their differences. A conversation that ultimately feels as if it fits together like pieces of a puzzle.