Jump Shot Group Show
April 23 - June 17, 2022
Al Svoboda, IF, 2021, gouache, ink, acrylic gel, and paper on canvas
Jump Shot
Group Show
Curated by Lisha Bai, Studio Archive Project
Opening on April 28th, 2022, from 6 PM to 9 PM
On view until June 17th, 2022
Featuring: Ben K. Voss, Marianne Gagnier, Calvin Burton, Maria Walker, Al Svoboda, Julie Torres, Christopher Peterson, and David Scanavino
A reliable jump shot is acquired by taking many jump shots. Improv shows take place before audiences after much practice with audiences absent. A novel sauce made well several times then tweaked with improvements and made several times more, gradually consummates into a secret sauce. Practice might not always make perfect, but it can help us compete, react cleverly, and get things cooked without the operative hindrance of remaining constantly cognizant of our manners, modes, and moments of operation. At some point, things just click. And then what?
For visual art, the many ways in which that ‘what’ might manifest compellingly are matters of the rigor of experience converging with the spark of creativity, and they’re less about perfection than they are about intention, novelty, curiousness, and sincerity. With Jump Shot, curator Lisha Bai brings together eight artists – Ben K. Voss, Marianne Gagnier, Calvin Burton, Maria Walker, Al Svoboda, Julie Torres, Christopher Peterson, and David Scanavino – whose works in abstraction result from well-honed skills and material expertise being informed and inflected by practices involving experimentation, chance, repetition, impulse, unforeseeable outcomes, and material and process-related improvisation. Working in a range of mixed media approaches to painting, these artists let instinct and intuition guide the way, loosening their hands and minds in their treatments of surfaces, layerings of color, gestural marks, and arrangements of compositional forms. The yields include richly textured collages, brilliant saturations and washes, delicately layered repetitions, materially decadent sculptural paintings, and geometric abstractions in which conceptual considerations serve to variably soften rigid formalities.
Jump Shot evokes thoughts about planning and impetuousness, wisdom and whimsy, and seriousness and insouciance, and the artworks it brings together are full of textural robustness and chromatic radiance. It’s an exhibition of acrobatic layups and secret sauces awaiting the open minds and eyes of a curious audience.
— Paul D’Agostino
Ben K. Voss
Ben K. Voss lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He has had solo exhibitions at Left Field in Los Osos, California; Gazebo in Brooklyn, NY and 57W57 Arts in NYC. Group exhibitions include Sperling, Germany; Tourist, Vermont; Peninsula Art Space, New York; George, New York; Fjord, Philadelphia; Wild Palms, Germany; and Monte Bianco Montagna Sacra, Italy. His paintings have been published n New American Paintings, Edition 140, and ArtMaze, Issue 13. A collaborative publication Imprints with artist Midge Wattles and publisher Chateau International was released in Sept 2020.
Marianne Gagnier
Marianne Gagnier lives and works in Brooklyn and Copake, New York. She has had one-person exhibitions at Thomas Deans and Company, Maurice Arlos Gallery, and Prince Street Gallery. Selected group exhibitions include: Equity Gallery, Sideshow Gallery, Anthony Philip Gallery, Life on Mars, Western Carolina University, Haverford College, Ingber Gallery, Cedar Crest College, the New York Studio School, P.S. #1, “The Times Square Show” and “The Dinner Party Project”. Her work is in numerous private collections and the permanent collections of Western Carolina University, Bryn Mawr College, and the Public Securities Association. She received a B.A from Yale College in 1977 and an M.F.A from Parsons School of Design in 1993.
Calvin Burton
Calvin Burton lives in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been included in exhibitions at Present Company, Brooklyn; Jack Hanley Gallery, New York; Branch Gallery, Durham; Bronx Museum, New York; Appetite, Buenos Aires; Raw & Co., Cleveland; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond; Samson Projects, Boston; Second Street Gallery, Charlottesville, and Galería Ramón Alva de la Canal, Veracruz. Burton was awarded a Virginia Museum Artist Fellowship and a Fellowship at the Bronx Museum, Artist in the Marketplace program. He holds a BA in Art and Mathematics from Brown University and an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Maria Walker
Maria Walker (b. Philadelphia, PA 1980) received her MFA from Tyler School of Art and her BA in Visual Art from Brown University, where she also completed a Capstone Project in Poetry. She attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture in 2011, and received an Individual Grant from the Belle Foundation for Cultural Development in 2013. Walker’s work has been published in the Smithsonian Magazine and reviewed as a Critic’s Pick on Artforum.com, as well as in the Brooklyn Rail, New American Paintings, and Beautiful Decay. In 2014 Walker released Wise Object, a chapbook of her poems, in conjunction with her solo show at Projekt722 in Brooklyn.
Al Svoboda
Al Svoboda (*1991) grew up in Syracuse, New York, a post-industrial city in central New York State. He received his BFA in Sculpture from Syracuse University and went on to participate in a formative guest residency at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany in 2013, culminating in an exhibition in the same city. Recent exhibitions include a solo presentation of paintings at 57W57 Arts in New York City (2021) and participation in group shows in London (2021) and Karlsruhe, Germany
(2022). Svoboda lives and works in New York City.
Julie Torres
Julie Torres is a Hudson NY-based artist and curator. Torres’ artwork and projects have been covered by PBS, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, Huffington Post, Wall Street Journal, Gawker, and Gothamist. She co-directs LABspace gallery in Hillsdale NY with partner and fellow artist Ellen Letcher.
Christopher Peterson
Christopher Peterson is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and lives and works in central Virginia. His work was exhibited in a solo show at Tourist Gallery, White River Junction, Vermont in 2021.
David Scanavino
David Scanavino (b. 1978, Denver, CO) lives and works in New York City. A graduate of RISD (BFA Painting, 2001) and the Yale University School of the Arts (MFA Painting, 2003), Scanavino has had recent solo museum exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT, and at the Pulitzer Foundation of Art in St. Louis, MO. He has had solo and group exhibitions at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York; Michael Benevento, Los Angeles; Marlborough Gallery Broome Street, New York; Team Gallery, New York; Bureau Gallery, New York; Marianne Boesky, New York; and Derek Eller Gallery, New York. His work has been reviewed in Art in America, ArtReview, The New York Times and the New York Observer, and other publications.
Marianne Gagnier, Map of the World, 2021, mixed media on canvas, 34 x 40 in
Christopher Peterson, Untitled, 2022, acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20 in
Al Svoboda, IF (Set of 4), 2021, gouache, ink, acrylic gel, and paper on canvas
Julie Torres On the left: Slump, 2019, acrylic on wood, 12 x 10 x 1 inches | On the right: The Notebook, 2014 acrylic on sketchbook 13 x 21 x 1 inches
in the center: David Scanavino, Untitled, 2022, cowhide, acrylic, and wood, 117 x 55 inches
Calvin Burton, Fata Morgana (II), 2020, oil on canvas, 24 x 32 in
On the right: Maria Walker, Window Calendar, 2020 - 2021, acrylic, canvas, wood, 70 x 30.75 x 2.5 in
Ben K. Voss, Aya, 2022, oil on canvas, 6x 8 in
Ben K. Voss, Angelo, 2022, oil on canvas, 6x 8 in