PAST EXHIBITION

Tony Berlant

February 14, 2008—March 29, 2008

New York, January 3, 2008 -- Barbara Mathes Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of approximately fifteen recent works by California artist, Tony Berlant. This will be Mr. Berlant's first solo show with the gallery.

Since the mid-1960s, Berlant has developed his signature method of collaging industrially fabricated metal against plywood surfaces. While his materials are ostensibly sculptural, his works engage the aesthetics of painting, demonstrating a nuanced appreciation for color, composition, figuration, and abstraction. These painterly qualities stand in tension with the assertive materiality of Berlant's surfaces. Steel brads puncture the picture plane at regular intervals, establishing a visual rhythm more related to a work's construction than its depicted content. Berlant also has a fondness for partially oxidized tin, which can lend his images a distressed or aged character. While at the outset of his career he used tin advertising signs for his materials, he now avails himself of a variety of sources of this metal, both found and specially fabricated.

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