August 27-September, 2010
Keeping with his history of dot pictures,
Gainan's swirling, bubbling drawing resembles a starry night and elicits the tensions
between positive and negative, fullness and void, realism and fiction.
Made up of thousands of small gestural pen marks, the picture seems to
come out of reflecting on the color of nothingness; in outer space the
void is black, and in the art context the void is the white of the gallery. Here the void is a
stunning blueish purple, this negative space thrives in between
spaces and reminiscent of almost forgotten places: under the bed, behind
the ajar door, the bottom of the garden, in south city St Louis or in
the night sky - transitional
spaces and a place of infinite contemplation. DM
About the Artist: Justin Gainan received
his M.F.A. from Goldsmiths College, University of London, London,
England in 2009 and his BFA in 2004 from the Kansas City Art
Institute. He was a Charlotte Street
Award Recipient in 2006. His selected solo and group exhibitions
include:You are sleeping, you do not want to believe. You are sleeping.
Dolphin Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri; Border Art Biennial 2010, El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, Texas; Salad
Bowl in London, APT
Gallery, London, England; Justin Gainan and Jason Underhill at Dan
Graham Gallery, Los Angeles; Michael Landy's Art Bin, South London Gallery. London, England; A Work A Day July 16, MOT International.
London, England; Chinese Whispers with Paul Klee and Walter Benjamin, Sassoon Gallery. London, England; The Bunker
at the Center of the Universe, WWII Underground Bunker-Dalston London,
England; thirtyeighthoursandfortyfiveminutes, HFBK Gallery. Hamburg,
Germany; Metamorphosis, Islington Arts. London, England; Charlotte
Street Award Exhibition, H&R Block ArtSpace. Kansas City,
Missouri; Field Codes: Patterns, Plots and
Covert Thoughts. Kansas City Missouri; Port Side Residency, Yellow Warehouse
Location. Corpus Christi, Texas U.S.A.; The Next Wave, Opie Gallery. Kansas
City, Missouri.
Photo by Shaun Alvey.
