William Turner Gallery is pleased to introduce two exciting debut exhibitions: Scot Heywood, Speed of Light and Jeff Overlie, Block Theory. The exhibitions will run from July 13th - August 31st, 2024.
Opening Reception: Saturday, July 13th, 5-8PM
Both artists present paintings that at first appear to adhere to the tenets of formal, hard-edged abstraction. Yet upon closer examination, one begins to see how their work challenges and often breaks with these assumptions. Both artists bring a subtle sculptural sensibility to their work, where shape and proportion provide the structural armature for color and upend expected formalities.
Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Scot Heywood has been investigating geometric abstraction for over forty years. A self-taught artist, Heywood's works are indebted to the origins of geometric abstraction in such artists as Kasimir Malevich, Piet Mondrian, and John McLaughlin though he has crafted a thoroughly personal interpretation.
In his multi-panel paintings, Heywood experiments with freeing art from the burden of the object, translating planes into elegantly composed geometric sections, each a variation on a theme. Reductive in nature, the subtleties of form and formal qualities of composition are paramount. Large in scale, he utilizes color-blocking of highly saturated panels in red, black, yellow, green and blue chromas, pristinely executed through layered, diagonal strokes. Heywood juxtaposes these fields of flat color, squeezing forms into tensions that often explode beyond the confines of their rectangular frames, activating the space and subverting the distinction between painting and sculpture.
Scot Heywood, Counterpoint - Gray, White, Black, Canvas, 2021, Acrylic on canvas, 36.5” x 42”
Jeff Overlie, born in Fort Collins, Colorado in 1968 has established himself as a prominent figure in contemporary art, drawing inspiration from the realms of science, geometry, and mathematics. Influenced profoundly by his grandfather, a scientist, Overlie's artistic evolution began against the backdrop of his early studies in marine biology, later transitioning into a dedicated exploration of visual arts.
Overlie's creative process is deeply rooted in his predominant work in sculpture, where spatial form, meticulous precision and technical proficiency are paramount.
Overlie approaches these canvases as a sculptor would, intricately molding straight lines, shapes, into a balance of spatial relationships. This then beckons Joseph Albers' Color Theory, reflecting a profound engagement with the underlying principles of form and color to Albers, and a radical rejection of the principles of Color Theory for which Albers is so well known. These paintings are, in a sense, polemical responses to the confining rules of color theory, wherein the artist purposely chooses color combinations that are radically wrong, in theory. And yet these paintings are charged with harmonic energy and emotional pull.
Jeff Overlie, RACT series 1-9, 2024, acrylic and enamel on canvas, 40"x 30” each