Ceysson & Bénétière

Ceysson & Bénétière is pleased to present Inflatable Tear, an exhibition of work by Louis Cane, Mike Cloud, Sadie Laska, Kayode Ojo, Claude Viallat, and Rachel Eulena Williams. The exhibition, comprised of works that dissemble the constitutive elements of painting, will be on view from January 23rd through February 24th, 2018.

On view in the gallery is a tightly focused presentation of work by six artists. Two of these artists – Louis Cane and Claude Viallat – were founding members of Supports/Surfaces, a group of French painters that worked to lay bare the process and structure of painting in the wake of the May 1968 protests in Paris. The four remaining artists – Mike Cloud, Sadie Laska, Kayode Ojo, and Rachel Eulena Williams – represent a younger generation working in New York who belong to no particular school of thought, but share a concern for deconstructing the traditional foundations of painting. Inflatable Tear works to establish a dialogue between these two generations of artists, but rather than posit a stylistic genealogy, the exhibition aims to highlight the continued relevance of painterly strategies presaged by members of Supports/Surfaces.

Supports/Surfaces blended elements of deconstruction, Marxist theory, political activism, Color Field painting, and geometric abstraction to establish a critical practice. Firmly committed to painting but deeply skeptical of its tenets, these artists reduced the mode to its bare essentials – the surface, or the canvas, and the support, or the stretcher – and pushed them to their limits. Much of the strongest work produced by the group was made with paint on unstretched canvas that assumed a sculptural presence in the gallery space, presented on the floor as often as it was presented on the wall. Louis Cane’s work is made with large bolts of canvas that he cuts, folds, and stains to create blocky forms in primary colors. Claude Viallat similarly works on unstretched material, but paints a biomorphic form onto their surface, a pattern that has become his signature approach to art making.

Also on view in the gallery is a diverse set of works by Mike Cloud, Sadie Laska, Kayode Ojo, and Rachel Eulena Wililams, which engage the relationship between surface and support. Mike Cloud’s S of B is comprised of multiple stretcher bars and sections of canvas assembled into a triangular form, which he suspends from the wall with a noose-like belt. Sadie Laska’s works on canvas combine stained slabs of fabric and collaged magazine to create rhythmic compositions of tension and color. Kayode Ojo drapes metallic silver fabric over the sharp frame of industrial music stands and suspends a low chandelier over a mirrored glass surface. Rachel Eulena Williams’ works are collaged from hand-cut canvas forms and lengths of rope that conspire to create a colorful assemblage with heavy texture and deep space. Taken together, these works attest to the persistence of a set of questions initiated by Supports/Surface, which have been generatively reinterpreted by a younger set of painters.