Jim Osman's STACK to Open at Lesley Heller Workspace, 3/10

Jim Osman's "Stack" will hold its opening reception at the Lesley Heller Workspace on Sunday, March 10 from 6-8pm.

In Stack, Jim Osman's second solo exhibition at Lesley Heller Workspace, wood scraps - literally castoffs from the working process - rise vertically and with a casualness that disappears on closer vieW. Wood, either sanded smooth or retaining the splintery surface of the natural world, mixes with paint and a surprising palette of laminated paper. Some pieces are small enough to be contained in your hand, but have the complete logic of a sculpture. While the largest, "Compass," hovers in its own space. The new work began when Osman was in one of those in between moments in the studio. He looked at this field of colored shapes and started to stack them, the goal being to make them stand on their own. The beauty and logic of the forms grew naturally, as he applied counterweights, cantilevers and simple joinery, allowing for a range of relationships to build. While Osman has worked horizontally, where shapes had a conversation more like landscape, the verticality of the new work allows the pieces to express how they were built and stand up in an honest, direct way.

Jim Osman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is an assistant professor and director of the Foundation Program at Parsons The New School. Osman has had residencies at The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo and received grants from Parsons and the Brooklyn Arts Council

In Gallery 2 at Lesley Heller is "The New Picture Plane" with David Brody, Devin Powers, Tony Robbin, Jered Sprecher, Siebren Versteeg, and Laura Watt.

The New Picture Plane looks at the work of six painters who explore the changing consciousness of space. In each case, computational systems are used or referenced, but the resulting image is more than the simple product of an algorithm. There is a subjective, often expressive element infused into the logic of the picture. Much as Romantic painting's depictions of ruins signaled the rejection of the classical model, the tendency to favor complexity over the reductive, clean uniformity of non-gestural abstraction, points to a changing definition of space and order in The New Picture Plane painters. The show focuses on artists who explore space influenced by science and technology through the ancient practice of painting.

David Brody constructs complex worlds that manipulate and reinvent the conventions of perspective space through paint. Building dynamic spatial systems that glide and grind against each other, Devin Powers pushes a tension between the classical orders of sacred geometry and contemporary constructs of space and cosmology. In Tony Robbin's recent work, quasi-crystal structures emerge and dance about a hazy green ground exposing planes of soft-hued form counterbalanced by a few passages of strong cadmiums. Jered Sprecher's painting exposes the dichotomy between geometry/reason and gesture/emotion creating paintings that could be described as a kind of geometrical expressionism. Siebren Versteeg's Clown_854 extends gestural abstraction through a generative process, replacing the brush with code, creating marks that closely simulate the evocative quality of analog painting and in some cases, magnify its effect. Laura Watt's intensely layered staccato of free-form networks in loose line and shimmering color evoke the awe of complex digital systems filtered through the human hand.

Lesley Heller Workspace is located at 54 Orchard Street, New York, NY. Call 212 410 6120 or visit www.lesleyheller.com for more information. Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday 11 - 6; Sunday 12 - 6.

Pictured: Jim Osman, Compass, 2013, wood, paint, paper, 81 x 90 x 14.