Black & White Gallery hosts [i]CHAOSMOSIS[/i] by Danish artist Jonas Pihl

Written by Philip St. John Wednesday, 26 August 2009 23:53

New York, NY - CHAOSMOSIS  has been borrowed by Jonas Pihl from a Deleuze's term 'chaosmos' as the title for his first solo exhibition in the United States. It represents complexity of the themes and formal issues he investigates and reveals the artist's ceaseless scrutiny of the spectrum of paradoxes to be found when random transforms into pre-determined and chaos amalgamates with cosmos. Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10, 2009, 6-8 pm. On exhibition from 19 September through 10 October, 2009 at Black & White Gallery in New York City.

In his native Denmark, Jonas Pihl is best known for extensive groups of works in which he connects the formal and the conceptual aspects of painting. The starting point for Pihl is paint itself. He investigates qualities and meanings of paint in its fluid and frozen states as revealed through reconstructed shapes of random splashes. Both three dimensional and painted still, his works combine moments of sync and resolution with unsettling agitations in the recorded form. Turbulent visual planes provoke barriers and gaps in the viewing experience.

Since 2005, the Copenhagen-based artist has been developing a new series of three dimensional works. He uses various shapes of random paint splashes to create stylized plastic shapes resembling the original splashes. Absurd scenarios are then painted on the three dimensional shapes to further reinforce the optical illusion of the perspective. In his choice of the bizarre figures and forms, the artist draws upon and transforms sci-fi motifs and themes from popular culture. These new works are being shown for the first time in CHAOSMOSIS . Installed on wall paintings serving as a stage-like backdrop, the new presentation simultaneously emphasizes and defies the trompe l´oeil perspective of this optically illusional environment and morphs into a psychologically charged spatial installation - a monumental single piece.

Jonas Pihl was born in 1978 and currently lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2008 he graduated from the prestigious Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts. Pihl has participated in multiple international group exhibitions and had several solo exhibitions in Denmark. Several of his works can be found in public collections of Nykredit, Købstædernes Forsikring and Pension Danmark. This exhibition received generous support from The Danish Arts Council and The State Art Fond.

Black and White Gallery is located at 636 West 28^th Street, Ground Floor, New York, NY 10001.  
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 6 pm.
Email: info@blackandwhiteartgallery.com // Website: www.blackandwhiteartgallery.com
For more information please contact the gallery at (212) 244 3007