CALVIN BURTON

Drawings
November 15 - December 16, 2019
Opening Reception: Friday, November 15, 6-9PM

In my writing I am drawn to parentheses. It feels like I'm getting away with something, having my cake and eating it too - saying the thing I need to say and the thing I really want to say. The ( ) punches a hole in the fabric of the text, through which one can comment or concoct parallel realities; it is a door to the peripheral, the one-other-thing, the aside.

In my work drawing has a parenthetical relationship to painting. They both engage with the same set of ideas—figures, surfaces, boundaries, rhythm—but specific drawings rarely lead to specific paintings; they are not "studies" for each other. Rather, they are concurrent activities, psychically linked, as if occupying the same location but in different time and space.

Drawings and paintings render visible in different ways, at different speeds. While a painting might be better positioned to embody a "body," complete with flesh and organs, a drawing, like the parentheses, hovers above the fray, while getting to the heart of the matter.

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Calvin Burton studied visual art and mathematics at Brown University, and his received his MFA in painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. His work has been exhibited at Present Company (New York), Jack Hanley Gallery (New York), Cuchifritos (New York), Branch Gallery (Durham), Samson Projects (Boston), The Bronx Museum (Bronx), Raw & Co. (Cleveland), and Reynolds Gallery (Richmond); and reviewed in Art in America. He is based in Brooklyn.