Hellbent is in LA to open his show at CAVE tonight, and he shares with you these exclusive shots of the next phase of his abstract patterned color bars for the gallery he calls Mix Tapes. New is the sophistication in dimension and shadow, and a lot more white space, with pieces broken apart and reassembled in a looser, less dense buildup – a continuation of the direction he began for the “Spectrum” group show he was in last month.
“My ‘No Wave’ paintings are a further exploration of abstraction that I have been working on for the last year and half and I feel that they are going to continue to evolve,” he says. “In the same way that Richard Dieberkorn’s Ocean Park series was a 7-year journey, I think the Mix Tape series is only in its infancy.”
“With these current paintings I have been exploring leaving parts of the canvas untouched and allowing the white of the gesso to become a part of the paintings. I think this lets the painting breath and provides a ground for the viewer.”
“I have also been adding shadow to some of the different ‘Shafts’ to enhance the dimensionality of these paintings. While in the early phase of this work I think the color itself had achieved a 3D effect, if subtly, with the shadows it is instantly apparent. I was initially hesitant about the shadows but I have been having so much fun and since I had used them in murals in the past it was an easy transition. I am having a lot fun playing with these different layers and figuring out the different planes of the canvas as I construct them.”
All images courtesy and © of Hellbent and Cave Gallery
Check out more about “No Wave” on Facebook.
Other Articles You May Like from BSA:
The same week we published Carlo McCormick’s extensive essay entitled “Why Monuments?,” in which he posits that we need to find a valid way to deal with statuary that celebrates enslavers, among othe...
“My proposal for this year's mural is a kind of post-graffiti,” says the Bucharest-based member of Sweet Damage Crew, using a term being bandied about by scholars and academics these days to describe ...
Contemporary artist and muralist Sebas Velasco was born in 1988 in Burgos, a city in northern Spain. His disciplined romance with painting continues to produce nighttime scenes of the urban every day...
In the realm where imagination dances with audacity, Yok & Sheryo, the dynamic duo hailing from the crossroads of New York, Australia, and Asia, have conjured up a whimsical masterpiece, aptly ti...
Come on, you know the weather has been gorgeous, New York. So many memories to make right now, rolling in the grass, rocking in a swing, chasing after a skirt, slathering up a wall with goopy wheat pa...