Trevor Shimizu

In his sixth solo exhibition at 47 Canal, Trevor Shimizu continues his exploration of painting and artistic personas. Expanding from his landscapes that capture enigmatic seasonality and temporal shifts, this new body of work considers conceptual approaches to abstraction, bridging connections between facture and the artist’s body. This exhibition is accompanied by a related program of video works, curated by Shimizu, in collaboration with the New York–based nonprofit Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI).

Painting primarily from memory, Shimizu’s landscape works exemplify the artist’s dense and energetic style: dry calligraphic marks with layers of paint economically applied. His techniques imbue a complex transparency in the landscapes, allowing the coloration of flora and other seasonal markers to blend together. The new abstractions in this exhibition push these techniques further, building on his interpretation of historical genres towards themes of transformation and physical process in painting and performance.

Following the arc of his practice, his previous work has always taken the subjectivity of painting as material (vis-à-vis his takes on “painterly personas”). Here, his interest in the performance of painting is interpreted through raw physicality and physical intuition. He makes references to artists such as Dan Graham, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, and Carolee Schneeman, whose performance and video works he came to know closely during his time as technical director at EAI from 2006 to 2013, amongst many other pioneering artists in the collection. Though he was initially drawn to comedic and personality-driven work, his recent reflections regard the artist’s body and movement in tandem with mark making.