Steve Turner Contemporary is pleased to present The Quadrant of Caricature, an exhibition of new paintings created in the last two years by Rowan Wood.
Wood's psychologically charged paintings explore the nature of visual language, parsed into "signs" that communicate formal and connotative ideas. Personally invented and culturally borrowed, these signs are combined to convey concepts within individual and grouped canvases. In either scenario, they function as sentences to be read, and as coded references--to the medium of painting, to privately meaningful symbols, to icons of contemporary culture's obsessions. A sense of humor factors into these paintings too, even as they are moody and cerebral.Wood's paintings appear simple at first glance, but a longer look reveals the artist's impeccable attention to craftsmanship. For example, all marks, including straight lines, are painstakingly painted by hand. In some canvases, kinetic patterns dazzle the eye. This effect can be overt, such as in the "Burn in Hell" paintings (upstairs), or subtle, as in the "hand-turkey" paintings (downstairs, among other canvases). Often the effect is not apparent until viewing from a 45-degree angle brings out juxtaposed hues - a reward for looking.
Steve Turner Contemporary is also pleased to announce the publication of Rowan Wood: Five Years of Paintings, with an essay by Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer and thirty illustrations of Wood's paintings.Born in San Francisco in 1977, Wood earned a BA in Art from UCLA in 2009. He had a solo exhibition at Steve Turner (2010) and his works have been in group exhibitions including Wall to Wall, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles (2010); Supernatural, Jancar Gallery, Los Angeles (2010) and Panorama Los Angeles (ARCO Madrid, curated by Kris Kuramitsu and Christopher Miles, 2010).
