Cris Worley Fine Arts is pleased to announce, Clearing in the Forest, a solo exhibition of new works by gallery artist Steven Charles. This is Charles’ third solo exhibition at the gallery.
After his previous studio-clearing exhibition, Steven Charles presents a new body of paintings, rendered in black and white. The artist challenged himself to paint without color and without the use of familiar tools, developing new ways of working that called into question his own preconceived artistic ideas.
Charles is restless in his approach to art-making. Following the Jasper Johns adage, “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it,” the artist returns to a single painting again and again, working across multiple paintings at a time. As a result, the paintings bleed into each other; a problem arising in one may serve as the solution in another, and vice versa.
Clearing in the Forest derives its name from a painting by Paul Klee, one of the artist’s many inspirations. But viewers are as likely to find connections to Klee as they are to comic books, punk rock, and contemporary literature. A self-described “satellite dish,” Charles is receptive and responsive to input. As a result his works are frenetic, but familiar; content to hover on the brink of total perception.
Steven Charles was born in Birkenhead, England and grew up in Bedford, Texas. He received an MFA from The Tyler School of Art (1996) and BFA from the University of North Texas (1994). Charles received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and an Artist’s Fellowship from The New York Foundation for the Arts. He has shown nationally and internationally. His work has been reviewed in publications such as Art in America, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vice.
