Preview: Poesia “More Force Than Judgment” at Anno Domini Gallery opens TONIGHT

Poesia Transcend’s solo show at Anno Domini opens tonight. During installation, as gallerists Brian Eder and Cherri Lakey hung the paintings, Poesia painted geometric abstractions on the walls connecting the work.

Poesia’s paintings in this show are re-paintings of historical masterpieces from the Renaissance that have been transformed by a combination of the aesthetics of wildstyle graffiti and of geometric abstraction. These two recent, complementary styles are shoved up against the face of classical figuration. They concoct an equation of avant-progressive presentation and deconstructivist re-presentation.

This singular body of work appears on Poesia’s aesthetic continuum as a deliberate and focused effort to celebrate and question “Painting” in the new millennium. This series pits new millennium painting against the pinnacle of discoveries from the classical period, when artists were finalizing the science of representational technique and pictorial style.

His new works raise questions such as: What is New Painting in the New Millennium? Can Painting in the new millennium stand up to the complete history of painting? What are its pertinent culturally relevant aesthetic elements? Can the new millennium’s Wildstyle masters stand up to the High Style masters? Can timeless art be created from elements that were devellped in a medium of ephemeral art?

By dissolving possible conflicts when juxtapozing anachronistic styles, and therefore creating a complementary cohabitation between them within the pictorial framework, the paintings in this exhibition answer in the affirmative.