“The Thing Itself”

Andrew Brischler | Jack Pierson  | Rob Wynne

February1, 2019 – March 16, 2019

Gavlak Palm Beach is pleased to present “The Thing Itself”. A group exhibition featuring text based and abstract works by Andrew Brischler, Jack Pierson and Rob Wynne. The title of the show is attributed to the William Carlos William’s coined term “no idea but in things” becoming the mantra for poetry in the 20thcentury. Williams  held a distinctly unique style, experimenting with poetry to invent an entirely fresh, singularly American poetic. The accessibility of his language use centered on subject matters that were of the common place. Resonating with our exhibiting artists, abstracted and object-based artworks are used to create visceral experiences by triggering associated imageries. Using expressions from everyday life, each artist contributes a unique style influenced by contemporary culture. 

Andrew Brischler creates bold, energetic works on paper and panel using almost exclusively colored pencil.  Through his richly colored and laboriously hand drawn panels, Brischler’s work investigates the intersection of graphic design and abstraction.  Brischler’s source material is culled from a wide swath of cultural references including book covers, vintage film posters, ephemera from long-out-of-print queer publications, and digital imagery in the age of social media. 

Jack Pierson works in various mediums including sculpture, photography and video. He is best known for his word signage installations, referencing traditional American motifs such as roadside ephemera and small town life. Works suchas “DOB LOL OMG WTF SOS RIP” are comprised of individual letters, placed together to create compositions with emotionally charged words and poetic phrases.

Rob Wynne works made of glass, glitter, and beads, are lyrical poetry in motion - glossy and gleaming. Through poured and mirrored text and abstract installations, Wynne encapsulates fleeting moments of exhaled breath and meditative spaces. His hand-beaded drawings on vellum, each of which take upwards of fifty hours to complete, are an intimate counterpoint to the poured glass works. Adding to his repertoire of material use, Rob’s liquifying, velvety bronze “!” adds a playful emphasis to this group exhibition. 

Andrew Brischler (born 1987) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He earned his BFA in Painting and Drawing at SUNY New Paltz in 2009 and his MFA at The School of Visual Arts in 2012. His work has been included in numerous exhibitions throughout the United States and Europe with recent highlights that including When We Were Young: Rethinking Abstraction, University Art Museum, New York, 2017; Lonely Planet Solo Exhibition, Gavlak, Los Angeles & Palm Beach; Sharper Image, Present Company, New York, 2017; Pointed Remark, Feuer Mesler, New York, 2017; Re(a)d, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, 2015; The Arts Club, London, 2014 and Painting:A Love StoryContemporary Arts Museum, Houston, 2014. His work is in the collection of The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL. Brischler has been featured in numerous publications, including Architectural Digest, 100 Painters of Tomorrow (Thames & Hudson, 2014), Modern Paint (Blouin Media, 2014). 

Jack Pierson (born 1960) lives and works in New York and Southern California. Graduating from the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston in 1984, Pierson has had numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United Stated and internationally, including most recently Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford; Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Cheim & Read, New York. Pierson’s works has been featured in prominent art institutions such as Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, Florida; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois; Institute of Contemporary Art, London; Centre d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain; White Cube, London and many more. His work can be found in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among other museums worldwide. Pierson is represented by Cheim & Read, New York.

Rob Wynne (born 1950) lives and works in New York City. He has had numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout the United Stated and internationally including, most recently Float at The Brooklyn Museum, New York open until March 3. Wynne has also been commissioned a large-scale installation for the re-opening of the newly renovated Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, FL. His work has been featured at the McNay Art Museum, TX; P.S.1 Institute for Contemporary Art, NY; The Drawing Center, NY; and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA. Wynne's work can be found in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; Centre Pompidou, France; The Norton Museum of Art, FL; the Columbus Museum of Art, OH; and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, Paris.