Shadow Boxing

Nick Aguayo, William Bradley, Jonni Cheatwood, Randy Colosky, Sydney Croskery, Tomory Dodge, Zhivago Duncan, Michael Harnish, Michael John Kelly, David Matthew King, Dan Levenson, Spencer Lewis, Thai Mainhard, Gena Milanesi

Over the Influence is thrilled to present Shadow Boxing, a group exhibition of abstract painters in Los Angeles.

The British painter John Hoyland said that working against a blank canvas is like shadow boxing. He was an artist who not only grappled with that eternal question of where to begin but did so under the looming shadow of Abstract Expressionism and its deep-rooted connection to the New York School. A presence that continues to haunt and fuel those detractors of abstraction and painting who claim it to be nothing more than self-referential, masturbatory, and exhausted.

This exhibition looks to explore and celebrate the strong and varied abstraction being made by these artists, their approaches to the blank canvas, and the vibrant center for new and reinvigorated abstract painting that Los Angeles has become. Be it the light, the weather, the people, renewal, and possibilities; something about this City appeals to, attracts, mirrors, the endless scope for the continued rebirth of Abstraction and its unique way of reflecting the World back to us.

Whether it be through the use of studies, action, staining, intuition, collage, layering, and erasure, be it geometric or lyrical, pre-planned or spontaneous; these artists find a way to stand up to the blank canvas, to the history of the genre, to come out punching and to reinvigorate and replenish it. And boy do these painters hit hard.