26 Sep 2014

Alex Hubbard - Jon Pestoni at Eleni Koroneou Gallery, Athens

Eleni Koroneou Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition with paintings of American artists Alex Hubbard and Jon Pestoni.

Alex Hubbard often combines painting with performance and video, creating an interdependent relationship between these different media, the one acting as a starting point for the other. For the current exhibition, Hubbard is presenting a series of five new paintings. The use of vibrant colors and curved lines is characteristic in his works, composing painting-fields with irregular shapes that highlight the depth and the transparency of the canvas. Employing a technique with urethane, acrylic and oil he creates grid-paintings which are not purely geometrical but rather determined by the density of the color that shifts on the canvas. In some parts the canvas may remain intact while in others one can discern dense color stains that have been left unhindered to take their shape on the surface. Hubbard's paintings can be described as a continuous attempt to explore the notions of structure, composition, mass, color and depth of the images he creates.

Alex Hubbard (b. 1975, Newport, Oregon) completed his education at the Pacific Northwest College of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program. Solo exhibitions include Galerie Neu, Berlin; 'Magical Ramón and The Five Bar Blues' at Maccarone, New York; 'Bent Paintings (why horses paint)' at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zürich; and 'Alex Hubbard, Hammer Projects' at The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Other recent exhibitions include '2010 – The Whitney Biennial', Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; 'Greater New York', PS1 MoMA, New York; 'Death Never Sleeps', The Kitchen, New York; 'Bingo, wait a minute', Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; 'The Nice Thing about Castillo / Corrales', Castillo / Corrales, Paris; and 'Si, es necesario', House of Gaga, Mexico City.

Jon Pestoni applies multiple layers of color in his paintings each one of them forming a story. The different layers of color sometimes obstruct and sometimes interplay with each other, composing a narrative that gets summarized at the center of the canvas. Scattered colors compressed under scribbles and irregular shapes are erased or disclosed. Τhe reading of each painting begins at the center, as the various layers unfold sequentially along the margins. The rich multi-layered paint surfaces indicate an aggression but also a harmony as the movement of the arm is almost visible on the canvas emphasizing the immediacy and spontaneity of the methodology of the artist. In his first collaboration with the gallery, Pestoni presents a series of four paintings he created in 2014.

Jon Pestoni (b. born 1969, St. Helena, CA) completed his education at the University of California, Los Angeles and Berkeley. Jon Pestoni has previously exhibited in Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Real Fine Arts, Brooklyn, NY; David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles; Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam; White Flag Projects, St. Louis; and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York. He was also featured in Vitamin P2, published by Phaidon in 2011. Pestoni lives and works in Los Angeles.