SHANNON FINLEY

NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MILES McENERY GALLERY is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Shannon Finley. Cascade is the artist’s inaugural exhibition at the gallery and will open on 1 April at 520 West 21st Street and remain on view through 8 May 2021. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated publication featuring an essay by David Ebony.

In Cascade, Finley explores the wonders of the perceptual and cognitive experiences created by abstraction. The ten new paintings that make up the exhibition employ an elaborate iconography of repeated geometric forms, interwoven lines and gestures, rich textures, and nuanced color contrasts. Optics, geometry, and color coalesce to create a personal and interior exploration of the processes of illusion and perception.

The formulation of each painting derives from a “visual language of the artist’s invention” that points to a variety of sources. Finley alludes to interstellar space in works such as Cosmic Rays, Orbit Walker, Pathfinder, and Subspace, in which shifting spheres appear to ascend or descend in rhythmic patterns. In Deep Web and Over Simulation, the artist addresses the digital language of cyberspace, utilizing rigorously abstract grids that appear to shatter before the viewer’s eye.

As Ebony writes in “Shannon Finley’s Hypnagogic Brainscapes,” the paintings yield a “calibrated pulse and rhythm” that transcends the viewer’s experience. “The power of Finley’s art arrives not only from the dazzling and mesmerizing play of light, color, and texture on each surface, but from a pulsating force that is felt by the viewer, although its source remains hidden. Emanating from just below the surface, in an unfathomable depth, there is an indefinable place full of life, light, rhythm, and energy.” The artist’s deliberate system of image- making engages a complete visceral experience.

SHANNON FINLEY (b. 1974, Ontario, Canada) studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, Canada and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Arts and Science, New York, NY.

Recent solo exhibitions include “Rupprecht Geiger | Shannon Finley: Licht, Farbe, Raum,” Kunthaus Kaufbeuren, Kaufbeuren, Germany; “End of Line,” Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; “Convergence,” Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany; “INTERFERENCE,” Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX; “Future Shock,” Culture Circle Gallery, Hamburg, Germany; Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany; “Paintings for the Future,”Jessica Silverman, San Francisco, CA; Susanne Vielmetter, Los Angeles Projects, Los Angeles, CA, Noirhomme Gallery, Brussels, Belgium and “Shannon Finley and Rupprecht Geiger,” Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany.

Recent group exhibitions include “Shall we go, you and I while we can,” Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; “Tomorrow’s Dream,” Neuer Essener, Kunstverein, Essen, Germany; “40 Years Walter Storms Galerie 1977-2017,” Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany; “Pioneer Lust,” Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX; “Colouring the Edge,” 3812 Gallery, Hong Kong; “Takashi Murakami’s Superflat Collection,” Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan; “Appropinquation,” Carrie Secrist Gallery, Chicago, IL; “5 years

schellingstr. 48,” Walter Storms Galerie, Munich, Germany; “ Shifting Optics,” Upstream Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands; “White is the Warmest Color,” Hedge Gallery, San Francisco, CA; “Neon- From glowing of art,” Stadtgalerie, Saarbrücken, Germany; “Neon,” Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany; Painting Forever!,” KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; “In the Studio,” Kunsthalle Athena, Athens, Greece and “Photography, Reconstructed,” Prague, Biennale, Prague, Czech Republic. His work is in the collections of the Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA and Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany.

Finley lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

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520 West 21st Street

1 April - 8 May 2021

Selected Works

Press Release