NEW YORK, NY.- Garvey|Simon is presenting J Ivcevich: Trail of Mystics, an immersive, multimedia exhibition showcasing the artist’s most recent paintings, sculptures, ceramics and sound design. This all-encompassing sensory experience is a meditation on the intersection of the deep past, present, and looming future. Trail of Mystics will be open to the public on May 4th, in collaboration with New York Creative Tech Week, May 3 to May 12, 2018. The opening reception will take place on May 10th from 6-8pm; the exhibition closes on June 9th.
An extension of his 2014 Shreds series, Ivcevich’s newest installation creates a wellspring of temporal tension. Drawing upon his interest in sociology, as well as his extensive international travels, Ivcevich blends innovative drafting technologies with traditional artisanal craft to manufacture his abstract paintings, totems, and mask-like sculptures. Found wood bases, designed by their own organic decomposition, are topped with metallic-glazed ceramic cairns, and an engineered sound score emanates from ritualistic, vacant masks. Ivcevich has engineered the sound to be non-repetitive and evolving, effectively using technology to enact an organic process. The choir of sculptures chants a blend of field recordings, improvisational performances, and a speech synthesis simulator, each emitting their own singular sound. What Ivcevich perceives to be the contradiction of the present is evident in the construction of the visual work and the sound itself. His aesthetic opposition calls attention to the ancient past that is active at the core of modernity.
Ivcevich points to the artifacts of global urban environments as the inspiration for Trail of Mystics. The painting, Mosaic Diptych, 2018, encapsulates his interest in time and meditation. Drawing from images of tattered street advertisements whose strata peek through one another, Ivcevich begins by manipulating his canvas’ surface with tie-dye and silkscreen techniques. The found imagery taken from the shredded advertisements is then put through a process of layering and compositional reduction, mimicking the accumulation of the source material and creating a pictorial historical document. The reductive quality of Ivcevich’s patterning lends a tranquility to the paintings. The work is at once old and new, chaotic and meditative.
Trail of Mystics reaches across temporal, cultural, and technological boundaries to create an experience of timelessness and quietude. By converging these oppositional forces, Ivcevich excavates a space for the present.
J Ivcevich received his Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Emory University, Atlanta, GA in 1994. He then spent the following decade working as a music producer, DJ, and record label creative director while pursuing an independent art career. Ivcevich was the recipient of the Pollack-Krasner Grant in 2001 and was featured on the cover of New American Paintings in both the Southeast and Northeast. He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Indianapolis, Washington D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, and Memphis and has exhibited in group shows in New York, Berlin, Providence, San Francisco, and Boston.
