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19/11/2003

Stephen Ellis

Von Lintel Gallery, New York

JEREMIADS

Von Lintel Gallery proudly presents JEREMIADS, a new exhibition of works by Stephen Ellis that for the first time in his career merge words with paint.

The artist describes the origin of this series:
Because I have lived for thirty years a few blocks from the World Trade Center, the experience of September 11th violently united the personal and the political for me. Afterward, as a way of coping with insomnia, I began to read poetry and to keep a file of the poems that I found affecting. Several months later, I woke up with a head full of images of these poems translated into the language of my paintings. Sudden as the vision was, it was not one I had anticipated or even wanted, but one that germinated gradually and involuntarily. Whatever else they may be, these paintings are not intended as didactic or hortative political statements; rather, I think of them as lamentations or jeremiads provoked by the events of the last two years.

Ellis lays out these paintings on his signature scaffolding--a complex grid of competing geometric systems. In earlier works, bright color blocks juxtaposed with striped patterns and swirling gestures allude to urban architecture, photography, and cinema. In JEREMIADS, the same coordinates have evolved into virtual sheet music for lyrical excerpts of grave and haunting poems about centuries of human violence spanning ancient Greece, medieval Persia, 20th-century Ireland, and contemporary America.

Matching the style and force of his marks to the natural rhythm and tempo of the poems, Ellis deliberately draws outside the measures, alternating between rants in bright capital letters and whispers in dark, almost illegible script. Words and entire phrases are often rearranged, omitted, scraped away, washed off, then covered by new layers of paint. No sooner are image and text merged than they are submerged into each other, revealing then concealing whatever traces of beauty and meaning may be found in devastation.

Stephen Ellis has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, and is represented in numerous public and private collections internationally.

For more information please contact the gallery 212-242-0599

Opening Reception: Thursday, November 20, 6-8 PM

VON LINTEL GALLERY

555 WEST 25TH STREET, 2ND FL NEW YORK, N.Y. 10001
T: 212 242 0599 F: 212 242 0803

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