Frightened by the wrath of mother nature yet fascinated by her vivid allure, Spann has
created a new series of Hurricane paintings. These works, expansive in scale were all
created using the brute force of directional gesture via hand and forearm, removing himself from dependency upon brushes and into a space of pure abstraction. The exhibit titled Trilogy was conceived upon by the anxiety of the day. Consistently being thrown back, forth, up, down and around without any real sense of control has become the new mental state. The whiplash of headlines from global and economic swings, fires from here to Maui, social media obsession and brinks of nuclear catastrophe is cyclical. Extending through both levels of the gallery these new paintings will adjoin two distinct bodies of work with common themes from movement to resilience with a focus on color, form and nature. In thematic conjunction of the exhibition and in honor of the new Tribeca space, Spann has sought out David Orr for a key note poem.
The Big Bad
At last we decoded the terminal message,
Only to find the pattern we had expected
Was false – a false trail of false breadcrumbs
Designed to leave pitfalls undetected.
We found a new pattern. We found a hand
Moving pieces we had thought were only
Part of the board, and shifting them to vantage points
We had ignored. We rewrote the battle plan
And reconfigured the satellite array
To show our progress from the very beginning.
The fault should be traceable—and hence correctable—
And once we found it, we’d be winning.
We found a new pattern. We followed its track
To a forest beside an abandoned tunnel
Diving wide as a boxcar into the rock.
A stale breeze blew over rusting shovels
And all of our instruments confirmed a hit.
We set a perimeter. We sent in a scout.
From the interior, nothing looked back at us.
No tracks indicated a force had come out.
But we had a pattern. At dawn, we dispatched
A team of our best, our trackers and stone killers,
To see if the signals were finally a match
And if so, to counterattack. And now we wait.
And now we wait. The tunnel gives nothing back.
The trees are revealing the first signs of gold
But the air is unmoving. The air is still.
It is quiet here, and getting cold.
- David Orr
Almine Rech is pleased to present Vaughn Spann's fifth solo show with the gallery, on view from October 5 - 28, 2023.
