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Devin Powers and SEMI AUTOMATIC Exhibitions Featured at Lesley Heller Workspace, 10/24-11/25

Lesley Heller Workspace announces the exhibitions on view October 24 – November 25, 2012 (opening reception set for Wednesday, October 24, 6-8pm). Gallery 1: Devin Powers, Paintings. Gallery 2: Semi Automatic, featuring René Pierre Allain, Paul Campbell, Margaret Evangeline, Gerald Ferguson, Micah Ganske and Shih Yun Yeo.

Gallery 1: Lesley Heller Workspace presents the paintings of Devin Powers in his first solo exhibition in New York City. Powers explores forms drawn from unusual geometries. He follows the nature of these spaces as well as contradicts them, creating a vibrant dissonance within the order of the composition. Powers gives equal weight to the content embedded in the paintings and the structures that elicit them.

In the painting Path, the space feels architectural, evoking the ribs of a vaulted cathedral. In other works, such as the recent painting Storm, the lines seem to be in motion; the dense, layered network manages to summon the drama of action painting. The color and the scraped traces present in the works add to this energy.

Powers enjoys the "grit and smudge" of his handmade process. It is a metaphor for "how this Apollonian or Platonic mathematical world brushes against our messy reality." The patterns he makes have no fixed answer, yet they evoke a semblance of infinity - for Powers, painting is about discovery.

Devin Powers received a BA in Studio Art from Bennington College in 2005 and an MFA in Painting and Drawing in 2009 from Brooklyn College. Since graduation he has had three solo exhibitions; "Things Keep Their Secrets" at Win Wilder Hall in Rockland, ME, "Unification" at the Kent Place School Gallery in Summit, NJ, and "Clotho" at the Brooklyn College Library in Brooklyn, NY.

Devin Powers and SEMI AUTOMATIC Exhibitions Featured at Lesley Heller Workspace, 10/24-11/25 Gallery 2: The exhibition Semi Automatic highlights the work of six artists that explore unusual means of art making. Most employ automatic systems that inform the creative process by replacing the personal touch or signature stroke with a mechanical means. The results are far from ordinary. Each artist finds a unique mark through his or her particular process and their selection and editing further personalizes the work. Actions once associated with The Common place are elevated to the highest levels of visual interest and beauty.