Opening reception: Saturday, March 26, 6–8 PM
For immediate release
Rawson Projects is very pleased to announce the group exhibition Works on Paper, on view from March 26 through April 29. The exhibition features gallery artists Ben Berlow, Halsey Hathaway and Sam Martineau. Although the artists all use paper as a medium in their practices, each applies a different working method.
Ben Berlow exclusively creates works on found paper, often book pages, with thickly applied paint creating intimate compositions that, though abstracted, emphasize a latent narrative. The works end with the way Berlow paints on the original material, but begin with the action of collecting: "Generally I use paper that has been used for another purpose because it comes with some inherent lines. It's a color other than the bright white of most paper and each piece is unique. The existing folds, markings, or color may suggest something, or I used them as counterpoints to what I want to make."
Halsey Hathaway and Sam Martineau, although both known for making works on canvas, both reflect on the painting process and experiment with pictorial language in their works on paper. For Hathaway, "Each painting comes from a drawing process. I’ll make a decision on what dimensions I feel are the right start and then begin drawing. The scale and geometry used in the drawing will move and shift until I begin to arrive at something that interests me. I typically have an idea of the sensibility I want, but the process really leads the way." With Hathaway's ink drawings, he cuts and manipulates stenciled forms, to further inform his pictorial language.
The process of making works on paper is also crucial to Martineau's painting practice: "By working within the same format, a standard size, restriction invites variation." Here Martineau is collaging more than he is drawing, just as his paintings often are the result of a kind of deliberate accretion onto a canvas. He approaches making works on paper as a process of selection or "seeking"– he will allow detailed scraps of fabric, cut shapes of paper, to become fragments of the composition, just as Berlow will choose a specific piece of paper for the potential of its surface to interact with the paint. It is his own choice: "I can't remember what I was feeling or what I thought I was doing other than making a figure or shape that I wanted to look at."
Ben Berlow lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Berlow’s work has been exhibited widely in New York at venues such as Feature Inc., James Fuentes LLC, Jack Hanley, Martos Gallery, among others. Recent group exhibitions include Paintings on Paper at David Zwirner, New York and The Lightning Speed of the Present at Boston University (2014). In 2013, Berlow was awarded the Steep Rock Arts residency. He holds a B.A. from Vassar College, New York.
Halsey Hathaway is included in the current group exhibition PaintersNYC at El Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños, organized by Meaghan Kent (Páramo Galeria, Guadalajara), Maureen Cavanaugh (Artist) and Luis Hampshire (MUPO, Oaxaca). Selected past group exhibitions include Future Perfect at Philip Bloom Gallery, Nantucket, MA (2015); Site/Displace at Kristen Lorello, New York (2014); Drawings at Denny Gallery, New York (2013). The artist will have his third solo exhibition with Rawson Projects opening in May.
Sam Martineau was born in Springfield, Ohio and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Selected one-person exhibitions include Fair Touching, CCAD, Columbus, OH and Rawson Projects, Brooklyn, New York; Radio 9, Arts Collinwood, Cleveland, OH (2012); Fingers in the Sun, Rawson Projects, Brooklyn, New York (2010); Paintings/Collages, StudioMiko, Brooklyn, New York (2009); Slip Down Easy, Brooklyn Fireproof, Brooklyn, New York (2005). Selected past group exhibitions include My Crippled Friend, CCAD, Columbus, OH; Dream Material, Dress Shop, Brooklyn, New York (2014); People Who Work Here, David Zwirner, New York (2012). Martineau is also the founder of EAU records.
For more information please contact the gallery at info@rawsonprojects.com or call 212 256 0379