Mercurial

Chukwuemeka Anthony Chukwu presents new works in his second show ever with VillageOneArt, Mercurial. This solo exhibition incorporates artworks that embrace painterly swaths of jewel-toned hues expanding across rounded compositions on panel: abstract, lyrical and, at times, haunting. Echoes of Frank Stella, with allusions to curvilinear paintings by Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, bring abstraction from the modern into our contemporary era. For this, the artist’s second ever solo show with the gallery, he offers up a sophisticated and organic approach to abstraction. Intertwined curved lines exhibiting the mark of the brush span melodically across the picture plane. In creating these hovering, tightly constructed compositions, Chukwu outlines a new, contemporaneous direction for painterly abstraction.

Combining loose brushstrokes and incisive approaches to geometric abstraction, the artist employs a precise strategy in delineating marks across the canvas. Chukwu embraces bold, uncompromising approaches to color and line impacted by a careful attention to simple forms interacting with one another. With the addition of detailed marks augmenting the larger, bolder aspects of the geo abstract composition, the artist indicates a maturity of painterly acumen, drawing lines not only across the canvas, but also linking disparate disciplines, spanning architecture, mathematical codes and formulae and even physics. On view through May 11th, Mercurial brings new aspects of abstraction to bear, titillating the viewer’s imagination.