Artist Reception: Friday, February 19, 5:30 – 7:30pm

Santa Fe, NM—LewAllen Galleries is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition Jimi Gleason: Linked by Light. Emphasizing seductive surfaces, nontraditional materials, and the luminescent use of color to catalyze close inspection of the mechanics of perception, the artist’s works qualify him as one of the most important practitioners of California “Finish Fetish” aesthetics. On view from February 19 through March 21, 2010, Gleason’s upcoming exhibition at LewAllen Galleries’s Railyard venue will present new works that merge the material and ethereal to evolve the methodologies of West Coast minimalism.

The artist’s profoundly meditative paintings instill contemporary abstraction with the dramatic glimmer of Cibachrome photography and the beautifully distorted edges of Polaroid film by means of a layering procedure that derives from printmaking techniques. Evidencing rigorous artistic discipline and a dedication to taking risks with both processes and materials, Gleason drags numerous gossamer layers of pearlescent acrylic paints down and across his canvases with hand-fabricated tools. Nearing the edges, he allows the paint to pool or smear, generating an emulsive effect that grounds his works in physical space while their vaporously atmospheric centers appear nearly transparent. Highly reactive to transient light effects and modifications in viewing position, the resulting paintings invite spectatorial involvement to suggest the infinitely broad experiential possibilities of art.

Born in Newport Beach, California, Gleason received his BA from the UC Berkeley in 1985. He then studied printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute before relocating to New York City, where he worked as a photo assistant and photo technician. Returning to California, Gleason was employed in the studio of Ed Moses for nearly seven years. Synergizing the disparate technical and compositional principles developed during his exposure to printmaking, photography, and mixed media painting, Gleason is now the subject of considerable curatorial and critical applause. Exhibited in significant public institutions including the Armand Hammer Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, and the Seattle Art Museum, the artist’s works are actively collected by a growing number of major public and private collections internationally.