Cadence

Artists’ Gallery is pleased to present Cadence, an exhibition featuring new acrylic paintings by Larry Mitnick and Andrew Werth. Though distinct in approach, both artists use the language of contemporary abstraction to explore rhythm and movement through layered structures, shifting spatial relationships, and tension between order and improvisation.

Larry Mitnick thinks about space in poetic terms: as movement, rhythm, and balance embodying human experience. In his geometric abstractions, he brings an architect’s eye to the construction of his paintings. Though the primary forms are typically hard-edged, this is no Flatland: painted transparency, atmospheric brushwork, and shapes jockeying for position create a sense of dynamism and dimensionality. Mitnick notes, "I like to play around with conflicting and contradictory colors and forms so that it takes some time for viewers to decipher what's going on."

Andrew Werth debuts a series of paintings titled Surfing on Entropy, each piece a meditation on life as a balancing act, a back-and-forth between order and disorder. Fluid, biomorphic forms twist and bend throughout the compositions like figures riding waves. Gradations of color swirl through the background while thousands of hand-painted marks move across the surface in opposing directions, a balance of visual forces on the canvas. “In some of these paintings, I’m using interference paints that change their appearance depending upon how you catch the light, in a way, making the painting interactive for the viewer,” explains Werth.