Agnes Barley

New York, NY–Agnes Barley’s third solo exhibition at Sears-Peyton Gallery New York is a continuation of her sustained focus on the emergence of being, space and form in painting.

A spirit of generosity animates these paintings. Barley’s genial, nothing-hidden brushwork gives a welcoming toehold to the viewer: everybody knows what it is like to stain a surface. The colorful orbs alight with perfected spontaneity on the canvas, sometimes wiped, sometimes puddled, sometimes with wispy, streaked edges no more than a single brush-hair wide. Their freshness heightens their overall sense of becomingness, and it is enjoyable to watch the compositions continually come into being before your eyes. A pleasurable intensification of proprioception accompanies their becoming.

But the pleasing familiarity of these surfaces –the way the watery acrylic bleeds just enough into the weave of the canvas, to name another example – heralds the real substance of Barley’s project: A kind of exaltation of the ineffable relationship between painter, painting and viewer, and the entwining of consciousnesses that can result from this encounter. Barley makes her presence palpable through the gestural orbs, and, through them, introduces complex formal relationships. Consider the placement of the orbs: cohabitating/independent, utterly dependent/autonomous; the contradictions are exactly the point. As if Barley is asking us to hold multiple and contradictory conceptions of existence in our heads at once. Where is the space between “I” and “we?” What does it feel like to be there? Can that space collapse and expand in the same way that the orbs seem to inhale and exhale on the canvas? Are some forms more essential than others?  The last question is answered in the negative; The orbs that burn the brightest are no more fully present than the orbs that gently smolder. There is a suggestion of mutual recognition between the orbs, and that recognition extends outward, encompassing the painter and the viewer in its implications. Barley leaves us with an enchanting proposition to savor: everything there is and everything we are - can be felt in our creations.

Agnes Barley (b. 1970) attended Parsons and Cooper Union before receiving her MFA from the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, Austria in 1997. She lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include “Straight on Til Morning” at Jeff Marfa (2021), “Summer in Love” at OV Projects in Ixelles, Belgium (2020), and “Selections” at The Drawing Center, New York (2010).   She completed a residency at Bovina Residency Worth Art Advisory in 2018, and at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Joan Snyder, at New Smyrna Beach, Florida in 2017. Her work is in many private and corporate collections.

The exhibition is on view March 27^th– April 26^th at Sears-Peyton Gallery in their Chelsea location at 210 Eleventh Avenue. There is an evening reception March 27^thfrom 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Exhibitions are open to the public Tuesday-Friday from 11:00 - 5:00pm and Saturdays from 12:00 - 5:00pm. For more information or to request further press images, please contact the gallery at info@searspeyton.com.