Jason Gringler:
Screens
February 5–March 6, 2016
SOLIVAGANT*
53 Orchard Street
New York, New York 10002
T +1 (347) 267 5703
info [at] solivagantnyc.com
Solivagant* is pleased to announce Screens, a solo project by Jason Gringler.
This exhibition is part of Gringler’s ongoing investigation about what constitutes a screen and how it relates to contemporary culture. A screen has many functions, often simultaneously; a shield, a reflective surface, a painting and a neutral medium of transmission such as a computer or cinema screen. A screen is the connection between observer and the observed.
Gringler has camouflaged Solivagant*, replacing the glass facade of the gallery with two large doors fabricated using expanded and mirror-polished steel. The reflective surface sits directly behind the diamond-patterned grate creating an industrial and armored exterior. The treatment of the gallery exterior has an inherent relationship to the neighborhood surrounding Gringler’s workspace. Gringler allows the viewer one small window into the gallery, about the size of a laptop, which he has cut toward the center of the doors.
In many ways, Gringler’s work is exclusionary, temporarily blocking access to the interior space, yet the exterior doors are simultaneously inclusive because of the reflective materials. Naturally, viewers will then find themselves contained within the installation when standing in front of the space. With each movement pedestrians, traffic and the shifting daylight are continuously projected against the gallery facade.
Gringler’s work produces a multi-dimensional and cinematic framework in which the material appears mutable and accessible. Reflective materials are characteristic of Gringler’s visual language and overall practice. He has frequently used them in combination with transparent glass and various types of industrial grade steel as a way to investigate painting from a vigorously physical and material-based position.
Additionally on view will be a recent “blue screen painting” consisting of multiple layers of shattered glass, acrylic glass, epoxy, detritus, collaged posters and other eclectic materials. This work literally references the history of video editing and production while nodding toward the slippage between traditional roles of background, foreground, and subject within studied painting practice. Each destructive gesture is contained within a steel framework and is suggestive of the artist’s hand or painted mark.
Screens emulates the way we experience our highly mediated contemporary world. It provides both a passive and an active experience, cinematic and theatrical. Gringler’s installation pushes the viewer’s awareness of the act of looking, and in doing so, shifts perception about one’s own gaze and surrounding environment.
Jason Gringler engages digital technology as a means for experimentation, simulating an aesthetic of violence within a studio practice firmly rooted inside modernist painting traditions. He has held numerous solo exhibitions throughout Europe, Canada, and The United States, recently at Steve Turner, Los Angeles; Stefan Roepke, Cologne; and Brand New Gallery, Milan. Jason Gringler was born in Toronto, Canada and lives and works in New York City.
Screens will be open to walk-ins and by appointment. Artworks are on view daily from 9am to 7pm through the Gallery’s window.
Documentation of exhibitions can be accessed 24/7 online at solivagantnyc.com. All artworks are available for sale.
SOLIVAGANT* is an Art Project Space measuring exactly 79 sq. feet, located in the heart of New York CIty’s Lower East Side. As a platform for experimentation and contemporary practices, it invites artists to work site-specifically through public interactions, community involvement, installations, and performances. Cultural nomadism, contamination of productions, and the hybridism of ideas are the fundamentals of SOLIVAGANT*’s projects.
For press inquiries please contact the gallery at info [at] solivagantnyc.com
