Alumnus Cy Gavin '16 in Solo Show at David Zwirner's London Gallery
Painting alumnus Cy Gavin ‘16 is featured in his first solo show in the United Kingdom. The exhibition is at David Zwirner Gallery in London and is available for viewing until December 23, 2021.
Gavin’s canvases reimagine landscapes by integrating themes such as race and memory. His medium is acrylic and oil. The colors are magnificently bright, reminding the viewer that while this painting might pull from nature, it is in no way an imitation of it. According to the Press Release, these works draw from “Gavin’s own Afro-Caribbean ancestry and American upbringing as well as contested histories in places that he has lived and travelled.”
These paintings were made during the early period of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial reckoning in America. During this time, Gavin was on his property in upstate New York and these paintings depict those immediate surroundings. Throughout the exhibit, “barren trees, a failed man-made dam reinvigorated by beavers, invasive flowers, and an artificial island insinuate notions of boundaries and succession that are also mirrored in the formal qualities of Gavin’s paintings with their densely worked, tactile surfaces and shallow illusionistic space, at once inviting and withholding to the viewer.”
One series of paintings works largely with blues, invoking “the Purkinje effect, which describes the shift in sensitivity of the human eye to favour blue tones in low light conditions.” Through this use of color, Gavin is able to imbue landscape with a sense of temporality. In contrast to the hot, red painting, Untitled (Beaver Dam), the series of blue paintings act as a respite.
Gavin received a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (2007), and an MFA from Columbia University, New York (2016). He currently lives and works in upstate New York. The artist’s first museum solo exhibition was on view at the Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, in 2021. Other solo presentations of his work have been held at Sargent’s Daughters, New York (2015 and 2016); VNH Gallery, Paris (2018); and Gavin Brown’s enterprise, New York (2019).
