BEING-WITH
Liam Everett

May 20 - June 25, 2011

Romer Young Gallery is pleased to present its first solo exhibition by the artist LIAM EVERETT. Everett’s installation being-with consists of a recent group of paintings which reflect the artist’s continued exploration of the perceptual experience. Focusing on the motion of light and its inherent ambiguity as an entity tied inseparably to our temporal reality, Everett’s paintings find their essence and their presence in the way of light, in the way light is constantly asserting itself both spatially and temporally.

“The work itself in fact is nothing but everything else…at no point is the work alone or not with. It is brought to us, carried over as an object of history and as a thing amongst (and because of) other things. The wall, the viewer, floor and the light are always (articulated) with the painting.”

Working with acrylic, salt and alcohol, and a spare palette, Everett’s paintings exist at the interstice between deliberate and provisional - at once form-full and formless, finished and unfinished. The artist structures his practice so as to limit the options, the decisions and aesthetic quandaries; neither the form nor the content interests Everett. Rather, Everett’s interest lies in the practice and experience involved in the displacement of both light and subject. “Light shows up constantly although it refuses to appear. It asserts itself in the quotidian both spatially and temporally. I’m not concerned with its properties and laws in regards to physics and optics. My interest is in its way. Light’s presence appears in the present, in its way.”

The paintings are soaked, stained, rubbed, buried, pressed, sanded, scraped, hung and dried - a process that the artist repeats several times. The paint/medium is directed inside of the painting rather than on top, penetrating rather than applying. “This is the effect of the stain: to be inside as a way of becoming. Integrated.” The forms which accumulate on the surface of the linen paintings are shadows, negatives burned from direct sunlight. Sticks, newspapers, stones and random debris. In many ways, the finished paintings are only the physical manifestation, a kind of residue of the actual work.

Ultimately, the paintings, not obliged to communicate, express or invoke, become fields in which it is possible for the viewer to see, experience, and penetrate. A series of ‘folds’ which collapse into a space that is experiential rather than communicative. “They can be read, although what they speak can never be what they are saying… They are not derived from ideas nor are they in any sense about something. They are closest to no-thing.“ Perhaps the painting grows its best roots when it sits still and does nothing and speaks of ‘no-thing’.”

LIAM EVERETT currently lives and works in San Francisco. Everett spent the past 10 years based New York. Recent projects include a solo exhibition at Paul Kasmin Project Space, in collaboration with Romer Young Gallery, in April-May 2011, as well as group shows at the Wattis Contemporary Art Center and White Columns. His work has been exhibited at White Columns (solo exhibition, 2009), 303 Gallery and Canada Gallery in NYC. He has exhibited internationally in Germany, France and the Netherlands. Also known for his performance-based work Everett performed a piece at ArtBasel 2009, entitled "On The Wall". Everett has participated as an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, USA, Ateliers de la Ville, L’Union, France, Künstlerhaus Bremen, Bremen, Germany and Astérides, Ateliers d'Artistes Friche Belle-de-Mai, Marseille, France.