Andrew Gbur: The Sword Paintings

For this exhi­bi­tion, Gbur presents ten paint­ings of swords in dif­fer­ent ori­en­ta­tions and color com­bi­na­tions. Gbur often focuses his work into series com­prised of a sin­gle image where the image is manip­u­lated and altered within spe­cific para­me­ters. These alter­ations explore the vocab­u­lary of paint­ing and reflect on sym­bols that have iter­ated in the far and recent past. For this exhi­bi­tion Gbur asks not only which “sword,” but what tool, object, image, or shape is right for defend­ing or advanc­ing in any given sit­u­a­tion, draw­ing atten­tion to the viewer’s hier­ar­chy of pref­er­ences.

Andrew Gbur (b.1984) lives in Lan­caster, Penn­syl­va­nia. He has pre­sented solo exhi­bi­tions at Eleven Riv­ing­ton, New York, The Still House Group, New York, and Carl Kostyál, Stock­holm. Group exhi­bi­tions include shows at MoMA PS1, New York, Know More Games, New York, Mal­lorca Land­ings, Palma De Mal­lorca, Spain, and Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadel­phia. Gbur recently col­lab­o­rated with the artists Augus­tus Thomp­son and Joe Graham-Felsen on an instal­la­tion cur­rently on view at the Zablu­dow­icz Col­lec­tion in Lon­don. He is a grad­u­ate of Yale Uni­ver­sity, and an affil­i­ated fel­low at the Amer­i­can Acad­emy in Rome.