AGGREGATE is a new show of works by Kevin Fey juxtaposing two distinct methods of painting.
In the first series (Enamels) heavily pigmented enamel paints are poured and coaxed into fluid luminous layers. These layers are built up slowly in reaction to one another – the final painting is an improvised arrival, a newly formed continent of aesthetic exploration. In Blue this process is pushed to its edge – Blue is derived from a single application of enamel paint onto a solvent saturated surface. The high ratio of solvent to paint causes a breakdown in the paint’s structure and the more fluid aspects of the paint are brought back and forth across the canvas surface entangling pigment with its receptive binder. The painting functions as its own destruction and recombination.
Aggregate’s second series (Expansions) is a unique union between painting and advanced printing techniques. These artworks begin as diminutive 4” x 4” painted canvases. The small scale of these paintings makes content of the delicate minutiae of paint in itself. These miniature paintings are transmuted into finished pieces by scanning at ultra-high resolution and printing on canvas 12 times larger – inches become feet and barely perceptible variations become dazzling patterns and striking shadows. In Red #1 millimeter fluctuations in the height of a white gesso become tectonic peaks and valleys before falling apart into a delicate spider web.
These artworks that physical, chemical properties have far more depth and beauty than post modern conceptual derivation. The Expansions series remains unfinished until the intervention of technology but still remains archetypically a painting. In Enamels a fluid application of paint can only be controlled so far. Both series encompass a surrender – one to technology and the other to paint’s unimpeachable chemical nature. The surrender of artistic control rebalances the relationship between artist painting and viewer – allowing for a more direct interface between painting’s intoxicating materiality and the viewer’s hedonistic desires.