Philip Argent - Misaligned

January 9 - February 20, 2016
Opening Reception: January 9, 2016 / 5 - 7 PM

Show Press Release

Shoshana Wayne Gallery is pleased to present Misaligned a new solo exhibition by Philip Argent.  This is the artist’s fourth show with the gallery.  Misalinged continues Argent’s refined interpretation of the swift flow of digital information and tempers that rapidity with his meticulous handmade acrylic on canvas paintings.  Balancing digitization with traditional painting has become Argent’s signature and this new body of work takes the artist’s interest in spatiality, temporality, and digitization further as he exhibits a more experimental painting style.  The subtle texture and randomness are a result of new methods employed by Argent who, for example, has used rubber dipped in paint to apply a sort of “print” to many of the paintings surfaces.  

For Argent, Misaligned refers to the proclivity of the new work to suggest a tenuous relationship between different spaces and surfaces coexisting in one painting; a relationship that questions the stability of the overall composition as a whole, whilst inviting questions as to what is revealed and what is hidden.  For example, in Untitled (Displaced) a flat and off-centered coral-colored surface cuts through the painting from top to bottom, as it does so it covers or conceals an implied space on the left side while on the right edge, curvilinear shapes or remnants suggest the inclusion of further abbreviated imagery or forms.  Here, the possibility of some sort of continuation or disruption is key. 

Concerned with the current cultural landscape, Argent’s Misaligned also suggests a cultural phenomenon that we are all familiar with as we scroll, flip, and touchscreen our way through the image glut—the slippage between which any sense of a stable or logical whole is left unchecked and unresolved.  Argent’s painterly iteration of such slippage rests in his use of black space—a spatiality that is both present and absent as it exists in plain sight on the canvas but is also boundless paving the way for all sorts of information (tangible and intangible) to stand in its place.

Philip Argent received an M.F.A. from UNLV and a B.A. with honors from Cheltenham School of Art.  He has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such MOCA, Cleveland; the Cranbrook Art Museum, MI; Mannheim Kunstverein; and the Young Eun Museum of Contemporary Art, Kwangju, Korea.   This spring twelve of Argent’s paintings will be in DATAStream at the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech.  His work can be found in the permanent collection of MoMA, NY; Albright-Knox, NY; and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art.  The artist lives and works in Santa Barbara and teaches in the Department of Art at UC Santa Barbara. 

For more information contact Alana Parpal alana@shoshanawayne.com