STEPHEN ELLIS | INSECTS AND FLOWERS: Opening Thursday April 22 6-8 PM

STEPHEN ELLIS | INSECTS AND FLOWERS

April 22 - May 22, 2010

Stephen Ellis

Untitled, 2010

oil and alkyd on linen
78 x 60 in (198.1 x 152.4 cm)
SEVL-10-1

Von Lintel Gallery proudly presents Insects and Flowers, the first solo show of new works by Stephen Ellis since 2006. 

In this new body of work, Ellis explores the connection between physical movement, organic morphology and painterly gesture. He has emphatically shifted his focus away from his signature grids of complex geometric systems and toward a part of his visual vocabulary that has usually been subservient to the grid: the organic, gestural arabesque. Though present in some of his earlier work, these swirling, foliage-like marks functioned as a supporting counterpoint to the geometric structure of the image, as stitching to a quilt, or creeping vines on a brick wall. Here, they play the lead; they are the structure.

Stephen Ellis's paintings appear in numerous public and private collections across the United States and Europe, including the Albright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Fogg Museum at Harvard University, the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford and the Fond Nationale Art Contemporaine (FNAC) in France. This exhibition marks the artist's ninth solo show with Von Lintel Gallery since its inception in Munich and his twelfth one-person show in New York.