pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to present Always Never, the first solo exhibition with the gallery by Oakland-based artist Linda Geary. Geary’s practice has long been rooted in collage, cutting, masking, and deliberate construction. Building up color, shape, and pattern through layered compositions, she develops paintings where structure and revision unfold together. In Always Never, this foundation remains, but the new works move into a quieter, more atmospheric register while retaining structural tension. The palette shifts toward muted, weathered tones. The compositions feel open, luminous, and spatially deep, while the underlying framework continues to assert itself.
Geary builds her paintings through layered applications of acrylic and oil paint. In some works, layers of paint are wiped or washed away to reveal earlier decisions. In others, translucent layers settle over existing forms, partially obscuring them. Though these gestures move in opposite directions, both produce a similar effect: a ghosting within the composition. Shapes hover between emergence and disappearance. What has been constructed never fully settles, and what has been erased does not entirely leave. Decisions and structure re-emerge.
The exhibition’s title, Always Never, reflects balance and compression of time, as earlier moments remain active within the present surface. Large paintings can resemble fragments of murals that have been weathered or partially uncovered. Grids and recurring geometric elements persist with greater fluidity, less dominant yet still structurally present. The restraint of the muted palette introduces a different kind of tension, one rooted less in chromatic intensity and more in atmosphere and spatial depth.
A series of smaller paintings operate as parallel explorations to the larger paintings, offering condensed, high-energy investigations of form and color. They create space for risk and permission, allowing the larger compositions to unfold with greater openness and expanding the language of the exhibition across scale.
Always Never marks an expansion of the parameters of Geary’s practice. By loosening certain structural guardrails while maintaining intentionality, she creates paintings that are both open and assured.
