Current Exhibition

Art Merge Lab proudly presents Gestural Geometry, an exhibition featuring Los Angeles-based artists Chris Trueman and Joe Lloyd. Gestural Geometry is Art Merge Lab’s first two-artist exhibition, and its first exhibition featuring work by these notable abstract painters. Opening with a public reception on May 16, the exhibition will run through August 29, 2013.

Gestural Geometry brings together a selection of recent and new works by both artists, including painting on canvas and linen, and several works by Trueman on a plastic-based synthetic paper. The exhibition highlights works by Trueman and Lloyd that are historically informed, and that reveal the enduring paradoxes and continuing potential of abstract painting. Both artists see a breakdown in the geometric forms of abstract art between an appeal to ideal and timeless geometric forms, and the unavoidable reconciliation with imperfect and anecdotal material reality. Rather than resolve the contradictions, they are allowed to coexist in their works in unstable, yet compelling combinations.

Trueman, through the application of precise, high-contrast stenciled stripes, thick brushstrokes, and feathery spray paint, yokes together several irreconcilable strategies of representation to produce an unstable, and precarious formal tension. In particular, the works by Trueman included in Gestural Geometry combine the optical effects and visual motifs rooted, historically, in Op Art, with tactile and expressive qualities of gestural, painterly brushwork. Trueman describes the effect of combining these techniques as a “short circuit,” where the striped areas that produce the illusion of visual depth are interrupted by the literal materiality of the brushstrokes.

In addition, a series of paintings by Lloyd will be included. When artist describes the motivation for his artistic practice, he says, “I chose painting because it is a place where I see the impossibility of geometry, the tension between concept and form, and the attempt of an object and an idea to become the same thing.” This selection of acrylic, and oil on canvas paintings display this tension through the artist’s use of sharply angled triangular forms, and saturated colors that pulsate vibrantly in hot pink, or turquoise and silvery white over streaked baby blue or black field color.

Chris Trueman earned an MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2010. Trueman has exhibited his work in numerous exhibitions in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and internationally in Milan, Italy. Recently the Lancaster Museum of Art and History presented a solo exhibition of his paintings entitled Slipstream.

Joe Lloyd in 2012 completed an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. He has taken part in numerous group exhibitions including Paradox Maintenance Technicians; at the Torrance Art Museum this year; Painting on the Edge II and BOOM: Southern California MFA Invitation, both at Den Contemporary; and MAS Attack, presented by Artra Curatorial at LA Mart, in 2012.