Oliver Vernon: Double Down
New Paintings, Installations, and Wall Mural

Irvine Contemporary is pleased to present two solo exhibitions with gallery artists Oliver Vernon, Double Down, and Phil Nesmith, Flight Patterns, opening Friday, October 30.

Oliver Vernon: Double Down
New Paintings, Installations, and Wall Mural

Oliver Vernon's exhibition, Double Down, consists of new paintings in gouache and ink on paper and panel, and new, three-dimensional installations, which extend his compositional concepts into 3D space. This is Oliver Vernon's second solo exhibition with Irvine Contemporary. Oliver will also continue his wall mural compositions in the public installation space in the alley behind the gallery.

Oliver Vernon continues to find new ways to visualize a psychogeography of the con-temporary world, mental maps that enfold the multiple forms of our built, urban environment, the hidden architecture of complex networks, and the shape of organic life. Vernon composes works that suspend together in one image the simultaneous forces of chaos and cosmos, complexity and fragmentation, flesh and machine, nature and culture. His new series of paintings in gouache and ink and his three-dimensional installations take his signature approach to a new level: the works capture the push and pull of a globalized world at once connected by humanly designed architectures and elemental forces of life. We view the spatial and hidden architectures of cities and information networks, and our common fate in an ecosystem where life requires renewed human comprehension.

His paintings work to reveal a simultaneity--what is connected all at once and continuously, but what we can't see without a visual map. Multiple moments known in sequences of time are converted into layers of space. Refining his approach to working with multiple planes of space, the new works include three-dimensional installations that take us further into visual models for imagining the experience of simultaneous and interdependent worlds.

Is his use of interleaved planes of space, Vernon also combines bold graphic elements that quote graffiti and calligraphic styles fused with meditative and symbols. Working in gouache and ink in this new series of works also provides a density of color and line that perfectly matches the artist's conceptual direction. His work represents a new and confident fusion of many trajectories in contemporary painting never before combined in one coherent vision: post-pop surrealism, figural abstraction, street and graffiti art, and the multi-layered, complex visualizations of artists like Matthew Ritchie, Julie Mehretu, Fred Tomaselli, and Ryan McGinness.

For further information, contact Lauren Gentile, Assistant Director and Director of Sales
(202-332-8767, lauren@irvinecontemporary.com)