NEW YORK, NY.- Mitchell-Innes & Nash is presenting Specific Objects, on view at their 1018 Madison Avenue gallery from November 17, 2017 through January 5, 2018. Specific Objects features eight new woven paintings by Canadian-born artist Brent Wadden. This is the second exhibition with the artist since he joined the gallery in 2014 and his first in the gallery's uptown space.
Utilizing found or second-hand fibers like wool and cotton, Wadden works on a loom to create geometric abstract woven paintings. Not unlike Color Field painting of the 1960s, Wadden’s paintings communicate a sense of monumentally or infinity, evoking the expanse of a landscape. Unlike a pristine canvas, however, the viewer finds intimacy in the labor-intensive process. Having never received formal training in weaving, the artist leaves small fissures and inconsistencies in the composition, offering evidence of his own hand and labor.
The elements of collage and chance are present in the work. Wadden stitches together up to four independently woven panels in order to create a unified abstract form. The seams of the panels as well as natural color and texture variations in the fibers create subtle disruptions, softening an otherwise geometrically guided composition.
The deliberate use of the word “painting” to categorize his constructions complicates the notion of the painterly surface and reconsiders what it means to participate in an art practice not typically elevated to the status of “fine art”.
Brent Wadden (b. 1979, Nova Scotia, Canada) lives and works between Vancouver, Canada and Berlin, Germany. He received his BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2003. His work has been shown in recent international group exhibitions such as The Art Show – Art of the New Milliennium in Taguchi Art Collection, The Museum of Modern Art, Gumma, Japan; Bienal de Curitiba 2017, Paranaense Art Institute, Curitiba, Brazil; Stitch, Beeler Gallery, Columbus College of Art and Design, Columbus, OH; Making & Unmaking, Camden Arts Center, London, UK; High Anxiety: New Acquisitions, Rubell Family Collection, Miami, FL; Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada. He has presented solo shows at Peres Projects, Berlin, Germany; Pace Gallery, London, UK; Almine Rech Gallery, Brussels, Belgium and Paris, France, and has upcoming exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver, Canada and at PKM, Seoul, South Korea.
