Opening Reception: April 8^th, 5-8pm 2021

Gallery Location: 195 Chrystie Street, New York, NY 10002

Hours: Monday – Friday, 10 am–6 pm, Saturday and Sunday by appointment

Contact Info: , 917.292.6921, voltzclarke.com

Voltz Clarke Gallery is thrilled to introduce the work of KHALILAH BIRDSONG with a two-person exhibition RESURGENCE alongside gallery artist, JASON TROTTER. 

Khalilah Birdsong’s gestural and organic overlapping fields of color are not only playful and effervescent but serious and thought-provoking while Jason Trotter’s razor sharp lines are precise with an overall flat and minimalist surface.

Resurgence: an increase or revival after a period of little activity, popularity, or occurrence.

“I am interested in survival and resurgence. Distress, weathering is palpable on the canvas, but so is reawakening. I build layers up and then take them away to create a painting that is, ultimately, whole. The process of layering and stripping builds contusions, bumps and raw ridges, but also reveals patches of older, more forgotten colors. Every painting is an experience through process, which translates to the canvas to create a story that can only be experienced visually. My process is strenuous to the medium. Through it, my paintings achieve resolution.” –Khalilah Birdsong

Khalilah Birdsong has participated in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Japan, Germany and Italy. Her paintings are held in numerous private and corporate collections, including that of President Barack Obama and are under consideration to hang in his Presidential Library. Birdsong’s paintings bring to mind the work of Alfred Leslie, Joan Mitchell, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Jack Whitten and of, course, Gerhard Richter. However, whereas they were tied to references to nature and their style looser and freer, her work combines physicality with a precision and finely calibrated balance.

Named, in 2019, by Contemporary Art Curator Magazine in London as one of the “ 100 Future Contemporary Artists in the World”, Birdsong has won numerous accolades. In the fall of 2019 she participated in the XIIth Florence Biennale and received a Hambidge Fellowship for the Creative Arts & Sciences in 2020.

Birdsong lived in the rainforest of Maui, Hawaii from 2017-2019 where she painted fervently in nature and discovered a new meaning of life that is evident through her work. She currently lives and works in the mountains of North Georgia.

A Voltz Clarke gallery artist since 2019, Jason Trotter is pleased to share the Lower East Side gallery space with Birdsong. Trotter is an American artist known for his bold geometric abstracts rendered in acrylics. The Los Angeles based painter explores contrast and balance using a hard-edge technique that produces sharp lines with abrupt transitions between color fields. His process requires him to work on a flat surface to tape off shapes, and then build up multiple layers of paint with a brush before applying the final coat with a palette knife for ample texture. While Trotter’s colors are chosen intuitively, his compositions are inspired by lines and forms observed in daily life with the intention of evoking an instinctual, physical reaction from observers rather than interpretive analysis.

In Trotter’s second exhibition with Voltz Clarke, he is focusing on triptychs that are assembled and framed as one piece. This multi-panel approach allows for a more dynamic effect than the traditional compilation. The correlation from panel to panel allows simple shapes to unite, resulting in non-representational compositions that make a singular, eye-catching statement. Jason Trotter’s work is intended to evoke an instinctual, physical reaction or feeling that uplifts. From social media to 24-hour news cycles, we are all enveloped in a constant bombardment of thoughts, ideas, opinions, and information that mostly add anxiety to our already stressful lives. Rather than perpetuate this, his paintings offer an escape by emphasizing his compelling compositions.

Jason Trotter is a graduate of Northern Illinois University who lives and works in California. Drawn to minimal abstraction, his work is strongly influenced by Carmen Herrera, Ellsworth Kelly, Josef Albers, and Frank Stella.