Caio Fonseca: New Paintings

From April 8 through May 23, 2011 The Drawing Room in East Hampton is pleased to present "Caio Fonseca: new paintings", the gallery’s second solo show of Fonseca’s abstractions on paper and canvas. A native New Yorker, Fonseca divides his time between Italy and New York, using his East Hampton studio in the off seasons. His work is in the permanent collections of many museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In his recent mixed media paintings on canvas and on paper, Fonseca’s distinctive method of image making has evolved in bold compositions that explore the counterweight of interlocking positive and negative forms in brilliant color. These new paintings introduce eccentric curvilinear imagery that evokes large shards emerging through sand in an archeological dig. At precisely considered intervals, the thick layer of white paint in which Fonseca’s pure pigment shapes are submerged breaks the continuity of his seductive brushwork in Matisse blues and reds. Serpentine elements that suggest vase fragments and silhouettes of musical instruments seem to surface and recede.

Constructing images from layers of gesso, acrylic paint, gouache and wax, Fonseca’s highly personal method allows him to define original forms and reveal surprising remnants of action painting as he excavates the vivid color and broad gestures of the underpainting. Inevitably, each composition becomes a palimpsest of visual evidence from different moments of the painting process. The underpainting of striped gestural abstraction serves as a rich trove of formal elements to be revealed selectively as charged negative shapes of brilliant color. With pasta rollers and nibs, Fonseca incises the golden section across paper or canvas, adding subtle staccato touches and linear markings that unify the tension sustained in each composition.

See below for full press release and selected works.