The exhibition will include a suite of paintings that deal with what is missing as much as what is present. The canvases all share an infrastructure–a decorative pattern of rigid grids and curly q’s that dissolves, disappears or disintegrates. The resultant pictures exemplify a series of dichotomies: of the whole and the part; the positive (space) and the negative (space); the foreground and the background; the representational and the abstract; the flat and the dimensional. The paintings exist in the moment when beautiful things may be falling apart, but haven’t.

Also included in the exhibition will be a group of works from an ongoing series, Branches–where mark-making and picture-making intersect. What begins as gesture or line becomes the branches of trees. The objective formation of this network results in the subjective experience of being enveloped by this natural form.

Koken lives and works in New York City and has exhibited in one-person and group shows in various locations in New York and beyond. More work can be seen at www.tomkoken.com