Bortolami is pleased to announce Rebecca Morris’ third exhibition with the gallery and her thirty-fifth solo exhibition to date. Morris continues to probe the vast range of oil paint’s material possibilities, drawing on decades of experimentation with thin, aqueous color to push the boundaries of contemporary painting. Each work takes shape through an ongoing cycle of trial and revision, extending past the canvas to encompass questions of color, aesthetics, and the conventions of abstraction itself.
The exploratory and divergent range of outcomes in Morris’ paintings is increasingly reliant upon the subtle yet transformative variation of pressure from her own hand: a brush, soaked with paint, dragged across a rough, unsanded gesso ground; the splintered remains of oil stick pressed firmly into the weave of canvas; or thick, impasto lines of oil paint, spray-painted to emulate molten silver, brass, gold, and copper. Conversely, other paintings are produced by far more indirect means. Many of Morris’ works begin with pours of liquefied paint and solvent pooling as the canvases are laid flat, drying overnight in the atmosphere of her studio. Others are replete with incidental splatters and run-off from other paintings, which have dripped onto a primed canvas drop cloth placed strategically on the studio floor. These drop cloth paintings become a kind of catalog of Morris’ process, an accumulated record of marks and footprints that trace accident and labor.
Bortolami