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Wallace Whitney - Wrong Mountain
July 11 - August 16, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, July 11, 2008, 6-9pm
Gallery Hours: Saturday, 11a.m - 5 p.m. or by appointment
CHICAGO, IL - rowlandcontemporary is pleased to present Wrong Mountain, a solo exhibition by New York painter Wallace Whitney. Wrong Mountain is a response of sorts between cross conscious artists, between mediums and expressions, between words and pictures. This exhibition will run from July 11 - August 16, 2008. A catalog with an essay by Joel Felix will be available; Felix will also give a reading the night of the opening. This is the artist's first exhibition with rowlandcontemporary.
"On orders from the order that hoards all order
I received a traveling itch under
the skin of my palm..."
So begins Monaural, a stunning 2007 chapbook of poems written by Chicago poet Joel Felix and illustrated by Wallace Whitney. Described as "a single output from multiple inputs," it displays a remarkable sensibility, merging data results of a children's test on the afterlife, ancient Roman epitaphs, and the Blues Brothers. Expansive and lapidary, it marks a fitting introduction to the paintings of Whitney.
Where Monaural ends, Whitney departs with this exhibition bringing forth a series of works that lay bare his colorful, nuanced, energetic and confident paintings. His large canvases are both atmospheric and gestural. His use of color relates to nature and is to some degree expressionistic; at times symbolic of emotion and states of mind. However, what may seem speculative and vertiginous are actually qualities that display an inquisitive, attentive, and responsive artist with a heuristic approach; his work is rigorous, pursued at a high level of formal and conceptual sophistication.
Whitney's formal preoccupations are at once heroic and self-effacing. While his artistic antecedents of late can be found in the likes of Milton Resnick, Louise Fishman, late Willem deKooning and Howard Hodgkins, Whitney displays a singular daring and is not afraid to blow up his own processes. There is an intensity to his engagement with the high water mark of the American sublime in abstract painting: brusque, potentially destructive, perhaps even painful, what is at stake is the creation of a new opening in what painting can do.
Joel Felix will give a poetry reading the night of the opening and has written an essay for a catalog accompanying this exhibition. Limited edition and signed copies of Monaural, published by Chicago's Answer Tag Press, will also be available during the exhibition.
Wallace Whitney received his MFA from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College, Annandale, NY and BA from Hampshire College, Amherst, MA. Recent exhibitions include David Krut Projects, March Gallery and Gavin Brown's Enterprise, all in New York. Whitney is a co-founder and co-director of Canada, an artist run gallery on New York's lower east side. He is currently an adjunct faculty at the Tyler School of art in Philadelphia, and was recently the Artist in Residence at the University of Tennessee, in the spring of 2007.
For more information, please contact the or call 312 421 6275.
