r.s.II™ studio is pleased to present CURVATURES, five small-scale works on paper in exposed float box frames, each with an edition of 10, by painter and sculptor, Reginald Sylvester II. Echoing the sensibilities found in his painting and sculpture practice, r.s.i™ studio explores hand-made editions, design objects, and readymades. Elevating the ordinary, dialogues within his practice evolve and emerge anew. As he investigates color, the monochrome becomes a site of inquiry, where tension meets composition and form. For Sylvester Il, these works tip their hat to seminal figures, Ellsworth Kelly and Henri Matisse, who both employed dynamic color and compositional techniques expanding the canon of contemporary art. Known for his nontraditional paintings, many of Sylvester lI's works are created with industrial materials - most notably rubber, aluminum, and steel, layered with acrylic paint.
Each hand-painted work, titled by color, illuminates the conjecture of naming and categorizing, archiving and labeling, that inform Sylvester Il's approach to abstraction. Evolving from ongoing inquiries into the expansiveness of material convention, the works on paper harken back to Sylvester Il's ceremonious
Offering painting series, first presented in 2022 at the Harvey B. Gantt Center, in Painter's Refuge: A Way of Life. As with much of the artists' work, his Offering paintings investigated personal histories, spirituality, and societal concerns at the center of Black life. CURVATURES builds on the cuts made in previous works that signaled a shift in Sylvester Il's practice.
The Offering series marks a moment of departure for the budding sculptor whose lexicon of applied mediums continues to swell, morphing into new dimensions. Cuts revealing the substrate of his paintings are a signature motif. Here, the artist explores the disruption of the surface, the painting plane, and how simple gestures lead to complex transformations that address space and architecture. Sylvester Il ventures beyond the constraints of what mediums constitute a painting, confronting the histories embedded in materiality and its multitudes of meaning.
His most recent exhibition, on view now, until Nov 9, 2024, at the ICA Chattanooga, in Groanings Which Cannot Be Uttered, presents works made between 2021-2024, illustrating the artist's relentless curiosity to push past the limits of traditional painting. To contemplate his oeuvre is to confront abstraction as a faith-based practice, one in which the artist is guided by the spiritual, culled by radical imaginings, and tethered to ancestral roots. Through viscerally laborious acts of creation, a rigorously disciplined studio practice emerges. Sylvester I| ruminates on the associations that earthly objects hold, reminding us that materials are vessels of memory and meaning. CURVATURES is Sylvester Il's newest foray into continuous explorations of materiality and form, offset by color and composition. Reflective and deeply personal, they are a testament, a profession of faith, in the power art for transformation and transcendence.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Reginald Sylvester II (b. 1987, Jacksonville, NC; based in Brooklyn, NY) spent his formative years in San Francisco, CA.
Working predominantly in abstraction, Sylvester Il makes large-scale paintings and sculptures which often include found objects. In March 2023, Sylvester Il opened Reginald Sylvester II: Green Gate at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO-his second institutional solo exhibition in North America. The show was preceded by Painter's Refuge: A Way of Life(2022) at the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC. Recent group exhibitions include Black Abstractionists: From Then 'til Now, curated by Dexter Wimberly, Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX, (2022), and 100 Years, Gagosian and Jeffery Deitch, Miami, FL, (2022). Recent solo exhibitions include CUTS, Maximillian William, London, England (2022); Feelin' Blue, and The Arts Club, London, England (2022).
Sylvester Il's work is held in public collections including Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC; Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, Charlotte, NC; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Pérez Art Museum, Miami, FL; Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Miami, FL; Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC; Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, UK; Spazio 1, Lugano, Switzerland; and Fondazione Stelline, Milan, Italy.
For additional information or press inquiries, please contact info@r-s-2.com.
