GRANT SCHEXNIDER- Paintings
September 7 – October 13, 2007

Thomas Robertello Gallery is pleased to present Paintings, the first solo exhibition of Chicago-based artist Grant Schexnider September 7 – October 13, 2007. An opening reception for the artist will be held Friday September 7, 6 - 9pm.

Schexnider creates large scale figurative paintings culled from violent and pornographic images found on the internet and other media-based sources. He routinely works with 96-inch square canvases depicting subjects who are victims and predators, engaged in explicit and violent behaviors. He has selected this square format in order to trap the viewer’s attention and the subjects’ behaviors, distilling chilling images in theatrical proportions.

Schexnider’s expressionist paintings exude a sense of urgency and sexualized rage. They address important current issues in contemporary culture including addictive behavior, violence, domination, internet pornography, as well as our culture of surveillance and moral judgment. Each behemoth painting confronts the viewer with a frozen moment, expression of pain, pleasure, guilt, determination, recklessness, or rage, but never ceases to be a painting in a grand theatrical expressionist style. The distillation of the essence of the elusive moment of climax, release of destructive energy, sexualized power, and addictive exhibitionism allow the subjects to take full possession of their ecstatic moments, and the viewer to participate in a voyeuristic opportunity without being implicated as an offender. The complex psychology of Schexnider’s art transcends the subject, viewer, and object, but always returns to the object or painting itself as the solid material foundation upon which layers of experience and memory are built. The viewer is left only with the experience of their own interaction with the work, as the paintings retain their impenetrable self-absorption, confidently eclipsing or denying access to their own self-possessed egos. Each painting remains a painting first and foremost dissolving into its own material matter and tactile fortitude. All subjects allow nothing to disturb their own solipsistic state and reveal an intensely shocking degree of unstoppable force rarely present in the history of art.

Grant Schexnider received a BFA from Louisiana State University, and graduated from the University of Chicago’s MFA program in 2006.