The Hole is proud to present Signs From Above, a solo show by Gosha Levochkin, the artist's second with the gallery. These eight new paintings were inspired by looking around, walking around, taking in all the different centuries of style the streets of New York have to offer. While perusing the gallery exhibition there are some interesting surprises if you look up as well. Absorbing both Art Deco buildings and their new neighbors on his daily commute to his Navy Yard studio, Levochkin also depicts daily rituals like the pour-over coffees, subway rides or piles of jeans.
In this new body of work Gosha gives us a vintage vision of the future, a branch in the timeline not taken. With his recognizable electric linework, where the brush vibrates and shading is stippled, he limns guitars, squirrels and ambiguous machines. In liver-red, olive, orange and pink, Gosha forges ahead with a digitally-influenced expressionist technique. Instead of hard-edge screen-like painting we see the liberated pre-computing language of Chicago Imagists, references to Roger Brown and Karl Wirsum, or one of his favorite elder states-people, Peter Saul.
This timeline gives us fluidity in form and imagery from Russian constructivist characters more than Photoshop, especially hidden in One Of Many and Constantly Growing. Trains traverse Tokyo to New York: in approaching these paintings, we see freedom, movement, revolution and sound, stars with a guitar handle in Finding Fault, trains and cars forging forward, adrenaline in color.
“When approaching this new body of work, I’m always telling myself 'what is freedom in your painting, each painting should have a moment of freedom.'”
