Opening Reception: Painter's Refuge: A Way of Life – Reginald Sylvester II

Join us for a gathering to celebrate our new exhibition, Painter's Refuge: A Way of Life – A Solo Exhibition of Recent Work by Reginald Sylvester II. For his first solo American museum exhibition, Sylvester reflects on the charged history of the materials he uses in the creation of his work. Military tent shells – functional utilitarian objects – serve as the substrate for a transcendent new body of abstract paintings that allude to shelter, protection, and refuge. In Sylvester's hands, rubber becomes a medium for deeply contemplative, nearly monochromatic paintings that vibrate with spiritual intensity.

Reginald Sylvester II (b. 1987, North Carolina, USA) is an American artist working predominantly in abstraction. Questioning his position as an artist in a time of moral crises, Sylvester seeks to integrate his personal politics within his art practice to create work which is rooted in social realities and guided by his spirituality. Many of his paintings are large-scale, featuring gestural mark making with layers of paint applied in a physically demanding process. Recently, Sylvester has begun experimenting with new materials, including rope, ex-military material, and rubber. Like assemblage artists before him, Sylvester is interested in the tactility of these materials and the histories they signify, in this way he moves beyond painting into the realm of object making.

Sylvester's work is held in public collections including the ICA Miami, Florida; Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Wolverhampton, UK; Spazio 1, Lugano, Switzerland; and Fondazione Stelline, Milan, Italy. His work is featured in the forthcoming publication Prime: Art's Next Generation, London: Phaidon. Recent solo exhibitions include With the End in Mind, Maximillian William, London (2021), NEMESIS, Maximillian William, London (2019); and The Rise and Fall of a People, Fondazione Stelline, Milan (2017).