Patrick Wilson

Los Angeles painter Patrick Wilson presents a magnificent new body of his brilliantly constructed, abstract acrylic on canvas paintings in his highly anticipated third solo exhibition Slow Motion Action Painting at Marx & Zavattero, June 2 - July 14, 2012. Wilson’s paintings are conceived with the ideas of beauty and pleasure at the forefront. As the title of the exhibition suggests, Wilson is inviting his viewers to enter the gallery, and then consciously slow down in order to actively experience his work in the same manner in which it was created.

Through the use of various sizes of drywall blades, the artist meticulously “assembles” his paintings by pulling on hundreds and hundreds of translucent and opaque layers of acrylic paint. The result is a dense architectural and chromatic pattern, made up of both astonishingly subtle tonal shifts and hard-edged color fields. Wilson’s playful color combinations employing literally dozens of tints demonstrate breathtaking risks, as the resulting variances in tone – sometimes harmonious, sometimes clashing – are always alive with delightful surprises. The effect is astonishing, as it calls to mind the slowly revealing work of light and space artists Robert Irwin & James Turrell.

Wilson's quest for beauty is not new," writes Corina Larkin in the March, 2012 edition of The Brooklyn Rail. "Nor is his examination of the limits of color as a space-making tool. But he does succeed in making oddly gorgeous and original paintings that embody the complexity and aura of life in the digital age. His work suggests that the questions artists pose may stay the same, but as the times change so do the answers."

www.marxzav.com