PHILADELPHIA, PA.- Pentimenti Gallery opened the fall season with the work of Edgar Diehl. This event marks Edgar’s first solo exhibition with Pentimenti Gallery.
Edgar Diehl creates truly composed geometrical paintings on aluminum supports. The aluminum is often bent or contorted with emphasis on the pattern and each work utilizes a limited palette, carefully chosen for its reactivity. The outcome is a perceptual puzzle. Often, when the viewer engages this puzzle, it can force a sudden awareness of light, color, space, and the subjective nature of vision. Depending on one’s perspective, Edgar’s paintings are reliefs, wall sculptures, objects, or paintings. As such, they are versatile and conversational, not content simply fitting in with a particular group or movement in the history of painting.
“Works of art are the result of hard work and unexpected discoveries. We proudly and willingly display them to our friends and to the visitors of our exhibitions. The effort that has gone into them should not be perceived. Artworks should be like the result of a game, which is perhaps why some people see them as nothing more than that.
For me, the development of unusual color combinations is very important. These harbor powers that impact our psyches. This is a subject of scientific research, which I have carried forward in my artistic work. My approach here is intuitive.”
Edgar Diehl creates work that optically straddles the non-locatable perceptual space where static objects move and shift, or trigger simultaneous sense-readings.
Edgar Diehl studied architecture at the TU in Berlin and painting, wall painting, and art theory at the Stadel Academy of Visual Arts, Frankfurt, Germany. He has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and the US, with notable shows at Conny Dietzschold Gallery in Sydney, Australia; Kunsthalle Messmer, Riegel, Kunstverein Erlangen, Bunsen Goetz Galerie, Nuremberg in Germany; Art Amsterdam; the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, and more. Edgar Diehl was twice nominated for the Andre Évard Art Award at the Kunsthalle Messmer, Riegel in Germany. His work is included in numerous corporate collections: Deutsche Borse, Frankfurt, Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt, Institute fur Zukunftsforschung, Worpswede, Nestle-Gruppe Deutschland, Tetra-Pak Gruppe Deutchland, Wiesbadener Volksbank, Wiesbaden, Germany, and more. The artist is represented by Pentimenti Gallery.
Pentimenti Gallery is also showing the work of Kevin Finklea. This exhibition marks the artist’s fourth solo show with the gallery.
Kevin Finklea’s wooden works are created with the purpose of persevering the fleeting human impulse and convictions and ignoring all sense of memory and time. By using excess materials from previous works, Finklea makes things that are verifiable and tactile, ignoring narratives and histories both past and present. Conversely, his paintings focus only on color, removing extraneous and unnecessary details, and feature a solid hue on canvas. Their large size and attention to composition serve to accentuate the already energized relationships between the colors he pairs. His works on paper are direct, fluid and untethered. Small in size, they rest on the edge of what is expected of a work on paper, and could easily drift into the realm of meditative object. By unburdening himself of the expectation that the past brings, Kevin creates a momentum, driven and focused, that moves in a very considered direction.
Kevin Finklea’s new paintings focus only on color, removing extraneous and unnecessary details, and feature a solid hue on canvas. Their specific size and attention to composition serve to accentuate the already energized relationships between the colors he pairs. His works on paper are direct, fluid and untethered. Small in size, they rest on the edge of what is expected of a work on paper, and could easily drift into the realm of meditative object. By unburdening himself of the expectation that the past brings, Kevin creates a momentum, driven and focused, that moves in a very considered direction.
“This show is aptly titled in describing my penchant for never making perfectly divided, equal spaces for color in my work. Sections are never exactly halved or quartered. And color, at times equally indeterminate, is used to re-balance the unequal imbalanced sections. I returned to making paintings 2 years ago, emerging from a period of fabricating painted wooden objects. My course, as an artist, resets or redirects somewhat predictably every 7 years. And so it has again, with a return to large canvases and works on paper.
The large paintings were made in response to two factors. After the relatively condensed period of painting objects, I wanted to make broader expanses of color that exploited the pigments I study. Many of the colors used in these works are quite rare and in some cases no longer produced. Secondly, I wanted these paintings to manifest a process of renewal and revision in the making of the color.
The works on paper are intended to be quick meditations on balance and dualities. Their starting point is their ground color. This is executed with paint re-purposed from previous works. The drawing is done exceptionally fast, without planning and in full color.”
The project room will feature three wood pieces. Kevin Finklea’s wooden works are created with the purpose of persevering the fleeting human impulse and convictions and ignoring all sense of memory and time. By using excess materials from previous works, Finklea makes things that are verifiable and tactile, ignoring narratives and histories both past and present.
Kevin Finklea graduated at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia (BA). His past exhibitions are: the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; 37PK Platform for the Arts, Haarlem, Holland; 2nd Biennial of Non-Objective Art, Pont de Claix, France; Paris Concret, Paris, France; Emma Hill Fine Art, the Eagle Gallery, London, England; Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville, TN; Reuten Galerie, Amsterdam, Holland. His works are found in private and in selected public collections: the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Bridgepoint Capital Limited, London, England; Wilmington Trust Fund, New York. Kevin Finklea is represented by Pentimenti Gallery.
