Spencer Lewis | Harper's Apartment
Harper’s Apartment is delighted to announce an upcoming exhibition of eight mixed media paintings on jute by the Los Angeles-based artist Spencer Lewis. While Lewis typically works on an immense scale, this presentation will feature a recent body of canvases that distill his vigorous approach to gestural abstraction within more modest dimensions. The show will open with a reception, attended by the artist, from 6pm to 8pm on Monday, April 29, 2019. This is Lewis’s second solo exhibition at Harper’s Apartment.
Composed of layered streaks of smeared, dripped, and spackled paint, Lewis’s canvases dwell in the tension between opposites: chaos and restraint, implosion and explosion, language and image, process and product. In his impasto paintings, variegated lines coalesce, darting diagonally, horizontally, and vertically like violent slashes against their jute backdrops. These brushstrokes are at once energetically rendered—defined by the sweeping gestures and movements of the body—and carefully determined, with brisk swathes of white and saturated pigment evoking a shifting plane of unfolding space. Merging the emotive intensity of Abstract Expressionism with the raw immediacy of graffiti, Lewis integrates diverse forms of mark-making, from letters and symbols to vaguely recognizable shapes, that blur the distinction between drawing and writing as discrete visual languages.
Whereas his earlier work repurposed disposable materials such as cardboard, Lewis has recently adopted jute as a primary, yet similarly malleable, base. These commonplace resources are especially amenable to Lewis’s additive approach, in which paint is roughly heaped onto and reworked across the surface in layers. This technique, made visible by the various levels of pigment, highlights the act of painting itself, while the works’ elevated, tactile surfaces, encrusted with strips of paper and other found detritus, emphasize their objectlike character. In underscoring the essential elements of form and process, Lewis’s canvases break down the fundamental components of painting, offering a vital platform for their reconsideration.
Born in 1979, Spencer Lewis received his bachelor of fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2002 and his master of fine arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2008. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Harper’s Apartment, New York, in 2017; Nino Mier, Los Angeles, in 2016; and Edward Cella, Los Angeles, in 2014. His paintings have also been included in recent group shows at Lowell Ryan Projects, Los Angeles; Harper’s Books, East Hampton; and Brennan and Griffin, New York; among other venues. Lewis is currently based in Los Angeles.
Exhibitions
- June 26, 2021 - July 21, 2021
Potent - June 26, 2021 - July 21, 2021
Nicasio Fernandez: Within and Without - June 26, 2021 - July 21, 2021
Frederic Tuten: Works on Cardboard - June 10, 2021 - July 10, 2021
Ryan Wilde: Venus Su Misura - May 13, 2021 - June 26, 2021
Austyn Weiner: Morning Wood - May 22, 2021 - June 23, 2021
36 Paintings - May 29, 2021 - June 23, 2021
Matthew King: Paintings on Aluminum - May 6, 2021 - June 5, 2021
Dan Flanagan: Everything Is a Lot of Things - April 10, 2021 - May 16, 2021
JJ Manford: View From Gowanus - April 8, 2021 - May 8, 2021
Ho Jae Kim: Butterfly Dream - April 1, 2021 - May 1, 2021
Joani Tremblay: The whole time, the sun - February 18, 2021 - March 26, 2021
Scott Kahn: Afternoon of a Faun - see all exhibitions