Gallery Madison Park is pleased to announce the exhibit Nearing Paradise: Paintings by Matthew Farina. The exhibition will open September 12 and remain on view through October 1, 2019. A public reception for the artist will be held on Thursday, September 12th from 6:00 to 8:00 PM.

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Matthew Farina’s paintings are energetic, gestural expressions that celebrate color and mark making. His latest work captures the experience of being immersed in a lush, imagined landscape, often one with no discernable horizon line. Through the careful use of color, visceral paint handling and dynamic compositions, his paintings make tangible the essence of light and movement.

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In addition to works on canvas, the gallery will present a series of paintings on Mylar—a translucent polyester film, which is a new surface for the artist. Formal juxtapositions of line, space, value and color define these more reductive works. Fragmented geometric-shapes and swaths of saturated paint and pigment stick—applied with an occasional scratch of graphite—activate the works on Mylar, many containing large areas of luminous negative space.

 

Matthew Farina was born in 1982 in Waukesha, WI and now lives in New York City. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2008 from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and a Master of Fine Arts degree in 2014 from the School of Visual Arts, New York City. Farina also studied printmaking at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where he earned a studio certificate in 2005.

 

Farina’s work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions. Solo shows include Central Gallery (Philadelphia), The Painting Center (New York City) and Rosenfeld Gallery (Philadelphia). Farina has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center and has received recognition from the Richard C. von Hess Foundation, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation and the National YoungArts Foundation.

 

An essay by the critic and curator Alexandra Fowle will accompany the exhibition.

 

 

https://www.matthewfarina.com/nearingparadise

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