Edward Thorp Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of nine contemporary painters in our summer invitational exhibit. The works included display highly personal imagery and deal with issues such as subjectivity, perception, history, symbolism, and gesture.

Gerhard Frommel‘s paintings emerge out of a conflict between the formal and the gestural. In paintings that grapple with the materialization of form within the void, sharp-edged elements slice into dynamic color masses to open up an illusionistic space. Elisa Jensen’s vision absorbs the new and dialogues with the old. Inspired by the layered history of ancient mythic symbols, Neolithic and Bronze age religious sites, and contemporary graffiti, her images emerge from a painterly realm of scratches and smears mirroring our deep-seated relationship to the world of our past. The emblematic works of Matt Kleberg borrow from architectural structures and reference the ornamental such as doorways, altars, and sets. They are organized by a rhythmic framing of bright colors and repetitive strokes that set a stage full of expectation and anticipation. Liv Mette Larsen works primarily with monochrome silhouettes. Her intuitive paintings establish an energetic dialogue about perception and daily encounters with the transitory moments of life. Her paintings dissolve the boundaries between figuration and abstraction, with objects transforming fluidly into organic geometric forms. The varied elements in Mike Olin’s paintings challenge our notion of a single reading. The layering of symbols and materials, which range from painterly spidery forms, to glass shards with coins can force us to read many signs at once creating new archetypes of signification and interpretation.

In her work, Jenny Snider, draws form and content from a wide variety of sources, including popular culture to history, art and politics. Ranging from dynamic colorful abstraction to the representation of natural forms, her paintings of clowns, rabbits, leaves, stars, and cars, offer a lexicon of concerns all equally handled with subtlety and candid exuberance. Jonathan Tracy has a multi-faceted painting practice that varies in medium, content and degrees of abstraction. His paintings’ graphic complexity invites the viewer to another world through a melding of its metaphorical ultimately leading us to a multi-layered experience. Michael Voss’s small-scale canvases embody a subtly shifting boundary between deceptive simplicity and complexity.

They are composed of color gestures with a lightness and quickness of touch in a process where the faintest of influence can tip the balance; they are as strikingly intimate as they are vastly open-ended. Susan Wanklyn creates informal yet refined painterly abstraction through a matter-of-fact architectonic materialism that gives way to a sensuous vibrant opticality. Created by brushstrokes of transparent milk-based casein paint, these seemingly effortless paintings exude method, skill and craftsmanship.