Instead of coming up with a different motif each time, I’d rather just have one motif and within that motif get experimental. But there are always exceptions to my rules.
—Mark Grotjahn
Gagosian is pleased to present New Capri, Capri, Free Capri, three interconnected series of paintings by Mark Grotjahn and his largest exhibition of new work to date. Stemming from a body of work that he created for a private presentation at Casa Malaparte on the isle of Capri, Italy, in 2016, these paintings signal an entirely new direction in Grotjahn’s practice, as he breaks away from the Face paintings in favor of a more experimental, spontaneous working process.
In his paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Grotjahn interweaves and revitalizes various historical modes of abstraction, probing the limits between gesture and geometry, impulse and exactitude. His works unfold according to precise yet mutating rubrics, resulting in an expansive vocabulary of visual motifs that migrate from one series to the next in compulsive, self-referential permutations. Like sedimentary cross sections or horizonless landscapes, the Capri series contrast the allover quality of Abstract Expressionism with moments of controlled, almost minimalist, logic.
