McKenzie Fine Art to Open David Mann Solo Exhbit, 10/18-11/17

McKenzie Fine Art has announced an exhibition of new paintings by David Mann, opening on Friday, October 18, with a reception for the artist from 6 to 8 p.m., and running through Sunday, November 17, 2013. This will be the artist's sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. Please join us for refreshments and a discussion of the exhibition with David Mann and James Roe, President and CEO of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, Sunday, November 10, 2013 at 4:00 p.m.

Fuse, 2013, acrylic and oil on canvas stretched over board, 66 x 44 inches

David Mann's abstract paintings suggest radiant environments and mysterious elemental processes usually inaccessible to the human eye. A main source of the work is Mann's fascination with the ethereal photographs produced by advanced imaging technologies such as the scanning electron microscope and the Hubble telescope. Using a variety of painting techniques and a multitude of layers, he recreates the sense of space and light that science has revealed in both miniscule and cosmic realms. Within these glowing worlds, Mann depicts moments of transformation via the dramatic coalescence and dissipation of translucent elliptical forms.

Mann builds up his paintings through the successive recession and projection of parallel planes of activity. As each painting progresses, its visual space expands, gains complexity and evolves into an engrossing atmospheric depiction. The final canvas may portray an instant of genesis or decay, but it invariably refers to its own creation. Mann considers it crucial that evidence of the painting process remains for the viewer.

Both the process and imagery imply transformation, complex interactions, and the unfolding of creative potential. Mann writes that the invented phenomena in his paintings portray "a bubbling up, an atmospheric cloud with elliptical forms that are conjoining, dancing, congregating and dispersing, all taking place in a charged, luminous arena."

The paintings in this exhibition are of two groups, each advancing Mann's longstanding concerns with the representation of light and space, as well as a painting's ability to conjure a sense of reality without relying on literal representation. These new works employ heightened internal light and atmosphere, greater tonal contrast, and more developed "networks" compared to earlier paintings. One group of paintings features centralized forms captured in moments of expansion or contraction within luminous fields. The second group emphasizes the network connections, generating dense, all-over matrices and creating a deep space within the paintings. Amid the glow of curious hues, nodes and tendrils, structures develop which are reminiscent of firing neural pathways or the omnipresent hum of electronic social connections.

Gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 11 to 6 p.m. On Sundays the gallery is open from noon until 6 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays are by appointment.