Russell Tyler, "Collision Course," Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, 2016

Russell Tyler Collision Course February 20, 2016 - March 19, 2016 About Russell Tyler: Born 1981 in Summertown, Tennessee. Lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Tyler received his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and BFA from Concordia University in Montreal. Tyler's practice consists of two complementary qualities: the gestural and the hard edge, or geometric. The geometric paintings are redolent of both the history of abstract painting as well as the contemporary image space of the computer screen. While sensuous and tactile, with expressively applied oil paint and rich impasto, the work is also highly structured and unfolds with deliberate shifts in color schemes and forms. The work invites a playful dialogue with several dueling movements from the history of abstraction, including Minimalism, Concrete Art, and Expressionism. While Tyler's work shows the strong influence of artists from these movements such as Josef Albers, the work is also distinctly of its time, related to digital technologies both outmoded and new. The unfolding blocks of color refer to the computer's organization of virtual dimensional space on a flat surface. The gestural paintings push the boundaries of confined space by allowing a certain cosmic wildness in which colors collide. Clearly influenced by Philip Guston and Cy Twombly, the work allows for drips, splotches, and textures which are meaningfully applied or randomly allowed to come through on the surface. Tyler has had solo exhibitions at Denny Gallery in New York, B15 Gallery in Copenhagen and EbersMoore Gallery in Chicago. He has received press coverage in Artforum, The New York Times, NY Arts Magazine, and La Monde. This is Tyler's first exhibition at Richard Heller Gallery.