July 11, 2011, Current

Roni Feldman: Shadowlighter

Mon, Jul 11, 2011

 Shadowlighter consists of works from two new series of airbrushed paintings. One untitled series consists of black-on-black paintings created with layers of matte and gloss paints. At first glance the surface of each painting appears to be a black, minimalist plane; but as viewers walk before the canvas the gloss paint seems to refract, revealing an elaborate representational composition of figures, like a drawing of a crowd by Bruegel the Elder. Depending upon light, time of day, and placement of the painting, the figures appear and dissolve, haunting the edge of visibility and perception.

Feldman’s other series, called the  Albedo Paintings, was created with white paint on white fabric; these works use ultraviolet-reactive paint and are exhibited under black light. The imagery is invisible until displayed under black lights, which causes the white paint to appear dark and the UV sensitive fabric to glow, thus revealing a high-contrast yet seemingly vaporous emergence of figures.

In both series, Feldman forms tension between individual and crowd, uniqueness and difference, abstraction and representation. His paintings are dense whirlwinds of figures that celebrate, protest, consume, dance, and embrace – juxtaposed against others that mourn, drown, burn, and dissolve. The crowds evoke the power and ecstasy of unified intention alongside a descent into mob mentality. The images recall the utopian pursuit of 1960s psychedelia, van murals, tattoos, and other airbrushed art forms. Historically, the airbrush – with its potential for soft edges and colors – is often used to idealize. For Feldman, the airbrush is a tool used to create images that reveal a thin veil between utopia and dystopia, civilization and chaos.

Roni Feldman (b. 1980 Los Angeles, CA) earned his MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2008 and his BA from the College of Creative Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara in 2002. He has had solo exhibitions at Toomey-Tourell Fine Art, San Francisco, CA; L2Kontemporary, Los Angeles, CA; Wilson Street Gallery, Sydney, Australia; Peggy Phelps Gallery, Claremont, CA; and Sloan Fine Art, New York, NY.