Jeff Elrod Letters from the Sky March 17 - April 23, 2011
Jean-Luc and Takako Richard are pleased to announce the opening of a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jeff Elrod at Galerie Richard on March 17, 2011.
Starting with an elementary drawing program, Elrod begins with "frictionless drawings" made with a computer mouse. The movements required to create the drawings are very similar to those hand gestures that used to operate some computer games. A smooth detached aesthetic arises where the mouse, instead of being a more precise tool for rendering, initiates a randomness that totally subverts the accuracy of digital technologies. It is a new way for artists to create a process that plays with uncertainty, impreciseness and gives many rich surprises and a stronger focus on what is essential. We can connect this process to those used by Georg Baselitz and the way he paints in reverse, Natsuyuki Nakanishi who uses brushes fixed to long stalks, Ron Gorchov who paints simultaneously with two hands...Alain Kirili would also recognize a far presto technique, a strong concentration followed by a quick execution. Indeed the graphic language is surprising, disorienting with strangely cut lines and unexpected forms that do not seem to be created by a human brain. Magic operates a structured, unified and harmonious new language.
Yet, it would be wrong to simply limit the work of Jeff Elrod to radical renovation of graffiti art, which is already substantial. His works do not only play on signs and graphics, but also with space and light. His recent paintings consist of layers of graphics in infinite spaces. The writings brighten as they layer up. The light sculpts and defines his pictorial space. This space, the matrix of today’s most innovative visual art, is nothing else than the infinite space of light of a computer screen.
The reproduction of the digital image and words on canvas becomes a process of not only applying paint to the surface but a dropping off, deleting of information. With Elrod's practice of taping off and painting, the deleted information becomes the image. By this way, he highlights the feeling of dematerialization of his paintings. Ultimately, the paintings resonate visually and conceptually as a fresh digital evolution of 21st century Painting.
Jeff Elrod's work has most recently appeared in "The Incomplete - Paris" at Galerie Jean-Luc + Takako Richard in 2010, a solo exhibition in the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas in 2009, "The Incomplete" in the Chelsea Art Museum, New York in 2007-08. His works are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.