Steve Turner is pleased to present The Working Sky, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based Graham Collins featuring new paintings and sculptures made from found paintings and other re-purposed materials. Cut, sewn, collaged and reassembled, Collins’ works are typically abstract, embracing the instability, defects and irregularity in the materials while utilizing improvisation and expressionist gestures within a highly articulated structure of frames, stretchers and supports. This is Collins’ first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

In previous solo exhibitions, Collins has featured works from one specific series. However in The Working Sky, Collins will integrate works from four series. Tinted Monochromes are monochromatic canvases either spray-painted or raw–encased in handmade frames of reclaimed wood. They are installed under glass that has automotive window tinting applied to its interior surface so that it obscures the painted canvas. Shaped Paintings are made from found representational paintings that Collins acquires. He then removes much of the paintings’ narrative content by cutting the rectangular paintings down to an irregular shape for which he crafts a customized stretcher. Sewn Paintings consist of stitched together scraps left over from the process of making various shaped paintings. Collins utilizes different compositional strategies in each work. For example, he has used scraps that only depict the sky and has arranged them in chronological order, from most recent painting to oldest; he has organized scraps by their specific shape; and he has utilized only the sides and overlaps of the source painting. Exhibited here for the first time, Paintings on Ceramic Supports consist of painted canvases on structural supports made of stoneware.

Graham Collins (b. 1980, Washington) received a BFA from Corcoran College of Art, Washington and an MFA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson. He has had solo exhibitions at Halsey McKay Gallery, New York; The Journal, Brooklyn; Almine Rech, Brussels; Bugada & Cargnel, Paris and Jonathan Viner Gallery, London. He lives and works in Los Angeles.