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Painting with layers of color— greens and blues and reds—layered and an image of a face outlined near the bottom

Gracie DeVito/ Merlin James/ Gabriel de la Mora

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Jan. 19–March 4, 2022

Art Alliance

 

The Philadelphia Art Alliance at University of the Arts is pleased to present one-person exhibitions by Gracie Devito, Merlin James and Gabriel de la Mora that revolve around a new sensibility of abstracted landscape. These three global artists have never exhibited in Philadelphia before. Each has arrived at these works from individualized tactics that variously confront the history of representation while acknowledging the materiality and construction of images. 

Gracie DeVito's paintings come from a history of performance. Her paintings have the effect of the fairy tales limned by Nabis painters; their rippled edges betray their origins, often painted on utilitarian painter's cloth instead of artist's linen. Yet they have none of the aura of Arte Povera, and it is DeVito's elegant sense of color that elevates the work. The paintings are accented with brilliant punctal passages—daubed, stained and drawn back into with coy figurative and vegetal references. DeVito balances (in)formal shape concerns with elements of schematic depictions surrounding most works by sinuous frames that capture and echo the support's contours. They are somewhat whimsical without deceiving the viewer. 

The paintings of Merlin James are also subtly radical in their own terms. His personal color sensibility is at times solemn, at others brightly exuberant. He works on a variety of surfaces whose textures have a great effect on his paint touch and attack. In some works, the stretcher bars may be visible through translucent supports. In other paintings, the outside contour of the canvases bows away from traditional rectangular modes. James often physically pierces the picture plane with the negative space punctuating towards pictorial ends. Neither wholly figurative nor adverse to abstraction, James, in effect, advances Western representational canon while deconstructing its illusionist heritage.

Gabriel de la Mora is a conceptual artist more than a painter, per se. Each of his projects incorporates constructing images from found, discarded and obsolete objects such as eggshells, shoe soles, speaker screens and feathers from which the Mexican artist creates minimal monochrome-looking surfaces of great technical complexity, conceptual rigor and embedded information. In this current series, de la Mora has gathered flea market landscape paintings that he exposes to the elements and the extreme heat of the sun on Mexico City rooftops. As the pigments degrade, often barely adhering to the canvas, the physical pixelation of craquelure filters our comprehension. We are implicated in the process of recognizing default representational clichés but also the fate of our planet under climate stress.

 

Installation view. Photo: Joseph Hu

Installation view. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of framed painting on the wall next to closed metal doors

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of framed painting next to window

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of two framed paintings on adjoining walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of painting from Gallery B into Gallery A framed by doorway

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of framed painting in dark colors

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of two paintings on either side of large doorway

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of a framed painting amidst three large windows

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of framed painting between two window frames

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of two paintings displayed on adjoining walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of Gallery B with three paintings hanging on two walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of four small works displayed in a line on a wall

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of a series of works lined up across two walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of line of small works across two walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of series of small works aligned across three walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of series of small works in line across three walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of four small works arranged in line on wall, interrupted by glass doors

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation views of two paintings hanging on adjoining walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of two paintings hanging on adjoining walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of three paintings hanging on three walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation image of three paintings hanging on a wall

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of paintings across two galleries

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation image of paintings across two galleries

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of three paintings on a wall

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of three paintings across three walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of a painting to the left and two paintings on wall to right

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of four paintings, one to the left and three on the right adjoining wall

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of paintings across three different galleries

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of two paintings on a wall in foreground and other galleries in background

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of two paintings hanging on a wall

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

installation view of a single painting in an alcove

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view of galleries E and F with paintings along three walls

Installation View. Photo: Joseph Hu.

Installation view. Photo: Joseph Hu
Installation view of framed painting on the wall next to closed metal doors
Installation view of framed painting next to window
Installation view of two framed paintings on adjoining walls
Installation view of painting from Gallery B into Gallery A framed by doorway
Installation view of framed painting in dark colors
Installation view of two paintings on either side of large doorway
Installation view of a framed painting amidst three large windows
Installation view of framed painting between two window frames
Installation view of two paintings displayed on adjoining walls
Installation view of Gallery B with three paintings hanging on two walls
Installation view of four small works displayed in a line on a wall
Installation view of a series of works lined up across two walls
Installation view of line of small works across two walls
Installation view of series of small works aligned across three walls
Installation view of series of small works in line across three walls
Installation view of four small works arranged in line on wall, interrupted by glass doors
Installation views of two paintings hanging on adjoining walls
Installation view of two paintings hanging on adjoining walls
Installation view of three paintings hanging on three walls
Installation image of three paintings hanging on a wall
Installation view of paintings across two galleries
Installation image of paintings across two galleries
Installation view of three paintings on a wall
Installation view of three paintings across three walls
Installation view of a painting to the left and two paintings on wall to right
Installation view of four paintings, one to the left and three on the right adjoining wall
Installation view of paintings across three different galleries
Installation view of two paintings on a wall in foreground and other galleries in background
Installation view of two paintings hanging on a wall
installation view of a single painting in an alcove
Installation view of galleries E and F with paintings along three walls

About the Artists

 

Gracie DeVito lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Overduin and Co. and Nicelle Beauchene, and she has been reviewed in Artforum and The New York Times. She received her MFA from CalArts in 2012 and also studied at The New York Studio School. She is represented by Tif Sigfrids in New York.

Educated at the Central School of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art in London, Merlin James has a critical sensibility and has published widely in books, catalogs and the august Burlington Magazine. In 2002, James was the first Alex Katz Visiting Chair in Painting at Cooper Union. In 2007, he represented Wales in the 52nd Venice Biennale. James lives and works in Glasgow and shows with Sikkema Jenkins Gallery in New York.

Gabriel De la Mora has exhibited at the Drawing Center, New York; Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico; Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C. and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Speed Art Museum, Louisville;  Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo; El Museo del Barrio, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston;  and the Colección Jumex, Mexico City.  De la Mora has an MFA from Pratt Institute, New York, and a BA in Architecture from the Universidad Anáhuac del Norte, Mexico City. He lives and works in Mexico City, and he is represented by Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City, PERROTIN in New York, Paris, Seoul, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong, SicardiAyersBacino in Houston, Texas and Timothy Taylor in London.

 

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