sky every day

Curated by Jessica Baran:

sky every day, titled after a 1968 poem by Aram Saroyan, is a group exhibition of work in which materials function literally rather than metaphorically — locating the expressive gesture in principal choices, processes and forms rather than the illusionistic tradition of descriptive marks. Artworks here communicate across disjunctive gaps within the gallery similar to spare, enjambed lines of Minimalist poetry — a formal genre in which words, punctuation and syntax become primary media. For instance, Christine Corday’s untitled white monochromatic paintings on aluminum (all 2017), distinguished only by a slight bend or fold, act as counterpoints to Keef Winter’s “High Street Girl 2” (2016), a monochromatic powder-coated pink painting on aluminum, vigorously hand-pounded by a hammer — the irregular and shadow-pocked contours of which become all the more heightened next to the crisp-edged, flat expanse of Joshua Smith’s untitled monochromatic pink painting on canvas (2011). Similar to Saroyan’s focused use of prosody and the space of the page for underscoring the materiality of language, the works presented here require the physical space around them and incidental environmental conditions such as light to assist in articulating their non-pictorial visuality.