Today we go #IntheArchive with Landon Metz’s solo exhibition at the gallery, Asymmetrical Symmetry, which was on view September 7 – October 20, 2018. Join us today, May 28, on IG Live for Tea Time with Sean and Landon Metz at 3:30pm EST
For his inaugural exhibition with the gallery, Metz created a body of work in direct response to the architecture of the space. Site-responsive rather than site-specific, each canvas functioned simultaneously as an independent work and a constituent component of a larger, experiential environment. Chance and repetition are consistent themes informing Metz’s various bodies of work and qualities that connected the five distinct groups of paintings in the exhibition. Rendered in four unique colors, Metz’s paintings were displayed in an atypical manner, progressing through the gallery in a serial fashion, moving both horizontally and vertically across the space. Displayed as diptychs and triptychs, alone and in larger groups, the canvases echoed specific measurements taken from the architecture of the gallery.
Just as Metz’s approach to presentation departs from the traditional, his method of composition is uniquely distinctive. Rather than paint in the typical manner, Metz uses a specially devised pigment dye, which he pours onto unprimed canvas, coaxing the liquid into vaguely biomorphic shapes. This labor-intensive process is lengthy as the dyes take many hours to evaporate and dry. The elements of time and action that infuse the making of his paintings distinguish Metz’s practice as both meditative and performative. This technique yields paintings of spare elegance, yet they are visually dynamic. The absence of the artist’s hand in the finished work is one Metz likens to Duchamp’s concept of the ready-made, in which selection and repetition displace the aura of artistic originality.