NEW YORK, NY.- Miles McEnery Gallery is presenting Mutations, an exhibition of new paintings by Shannon Finley, on view 26 June - 15 August. Accompanying the exhibition is a fully illustrated digital publication featuring a text by Sebastian Preuss.


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Over several decades, Shannon Finley has perfected a unique visual language of layered luminous fields and cascading geometries. At first glance, they suggest polygonal blueprints, or nets of three dimensional objects rendered in mid-collapse. Though, there is a glossy, dew-like quality to these works, a roughness around the edges that makes their mechanistic perfection feel strangely naturalistic. Each composition does not feel constructed but cultivated; a self-propagating organism rather than a finalized object.


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However, Finley’s paintings are anything but spontaneous; they emerge from a highly controlled, months-long iterative process. He begins by building geometric shapes on the canvas, then transfers an image to the computer to experiment with the next layer—exploring new combinations of color and form—before returning to the canvas to render the evolved composition in paint. This analog-digital cycle repeats multiple times, with the final image gradually emerging from an amalgam of five to ten painted layers.

Though marked by precision and intention, Finley resists imposing meaning on the works; his hypnotic images are not fixed, but allow viewers to construct their own perceptions from within the haze. In Finley’s own words, his “focus is on finding a language that functions for everyone.” Critic Sebastian Preuss notes, “his pictures grant viewers the freedom to look and think, a salutary prerogative in an art world that is increasingly dominated by multiple obsessive discourses. Geometry does not provide the content of Finley’s works, but it can be used as a structure into which his everyday visual experiences, as well as feelings and moods, flow.”

Shannon Finley (b. 1974 in Ontario, Canada) studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Arts and Science, New York, NY.

Finley has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; Culture Circle Gallery, Hamburg, Germany; Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Kunsthaus Kaufbeuren, Kaufbeuren, Germany; Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX; Mies van der Rohe Haus, Berlin, Germany; Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY; and Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany.

His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Khyber Center for the Arts, Halifax, Canada; Kunsthalle Athena, Athens, Greece; Kunsthalle Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany; Kunstverein Ulm, Ulm, Germany; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany; Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany; Neuer Essener Kunstverein, Essen, Germany; Prague Biennale, Prague, Czech Republic; Stadtgalerie, Saarbrücken, Germany; Städtische Galerie Gladbeck, Gladbeck, Germany; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; White Columns, New York, NY; and the Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan.

The artist lives and works in Berlin, Germany.



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