Tif Sigfrids is happy to announce the opening of a group show, which includes the work of Gracie DeVito, John Fahey, Andy Giannakakis, J.V. Martin, and Margaux Ogden. The exhibition will open on Saturday, February 25th, with a reception from 7 – 9 PM. An Athens, Georgia based modal jazz trio featuring John Kiran Fernandes, Laura Camacho, and Davy Gibbs will perform at 8PM. The exhibition will remain on view through April 1st.

The exhibition features paintings by five artists the gallery has collaborated extensively with, whose work embodies a spirit of intuition, performance, and chance.

Gracie DeVito, a Los Angeles based artist, takes an improvised approach to painting, experimenting with form and scale. In her smaller, irregular shaped canvases, the lightweight cotton substrates accommodate oil paint in a way that circumscribes their final form. Similarly, the large scale of DeVito’s simultaneous body of painting acts as a container for the idiosyncratic, performative element of discovery inherent to all her work.

It’s easy to see a parallel in this freedom of pursuit, to John Fahey’s experimental approach to traditional forms in both music and visual art. His painting, presented here, belongs to a body of work that emerged from a fortunate encounter with a stack of unused posterboard at a Salem, Oregon thrift store in 1999. We can imagine Fahey, on the floor of his garage, subverting the loftiness of traditional abstract gestural painting, with the substitution of his hands, feet, and raw behind for brushes.

Andy Giannakakis’ paintings emanate a process of revision constructed with time. Gestures of a wide variety coalesce amongst each other with surprising consistency. Murky colors seems to emerge from the history of the paintings themselves, seamlessly interwoven into smooth surfaces. While it is easy to see a deep reverence for various traditions in painting, it’s clear that the work clings most tightly to its own inner logic.

Working from Randers, an isolated town in Central Denmark, J.V. Martin was closely associated with the Situationist International movement of the 60’s. This association with a group that largely eschewed the significance of art objects, lends an air of extemporaneous pleasure to the paintings shown here, made in the late 70’s. With a detectable repetition in form, each carries a certain sense of immediacy.

Margaux Ogden, a New York based artist, embraces spontaneity and error in each of her paintings. There is a certain tension that exists, working with a single layer of paint and giving herself one attempt at both composition and palette. Each successful painting is proceeded by a number of canvases that must be abandoned, giving the work an element of performed chance.