The Frugal Genius, Golden Gallery, Chicago
January 24 - March 12, 2011
Press Release:
Golden Gallery is pleased to present The Frugal Genius, an exhibition of new works by John Henderson. This exhibition will mark the gallery's consolidation into one exhibition space located at 3319 N. Broadway.
For Henderson, the practice of painting functions as both a performance and a symbolic field, a daily activity through which to examine, dismantle, reconfigure and question the traditionally unique aura of self-expression. Engaging with multiple bodies of work simultaneously, his practice is more discursive than declarative. Henderson pushes the initial immediacy of his painterly investigations through processes associated with serial reproduction, framing expression as an open-ended question rather than a resolution. The resultant works can be read both as conceptual analyses and highly formal objects. These works present painting as a self-perpetuating system of visual signs in flux, where the activity of "the painter" occurs within and outside the surface of the painting simultaneously.
The Frugal Genius will include selections from three ongoing bodies of works---aluminum and bronze casts of paintings, modestly-scaled oil paintings, and photographs of painted-over photographs. A video of the artist mopping his studio floor will also be on view.