Jason Rohlf and Nell Waters “The Eternal Present”
Traversing material and energetic space from the celestial to the earthen core, a fragile, impermanent thread permeates this show ranging greatly in color and scale. Fleeting and temporal in nature, both artists collage, cut, layer, erase, and deconstruct materials in relation to what came before and what’s yet to come. Each is a letter in an ever-evolving language responding to its placement in both physical and metaphysical environments. Describing an intangible object or sound, subsuming a space unconfined by edges, having no start and no end, Rohlf and Waters capture such transient and contradictory moments in visual form; in an Eternal Present.
Jason Rohlf’s work is heavily process-driven, utilizing chance-based application methods while repurposing ubiquitous materials to convey an urban palimpsest. Inspired by weathering on his Brooklyn loft’s roof, the “Tar Beach” series weaves together elements of relief, affect, transformation, chance, and time. Recent vertical works on paper titled “Luft” convey billowing atmospheric forces through polychromatic waves pulsing across the surface by transferring wet paint from one painting onto another—indirectly imparting its patterned veils onto the next.
Embedded within Nell Waters’ work, a mutual understanding between process and concept prevail. Working on the floor in a sea of layers of raw, unstretched canvas, Waters resonates with ancient textile & cave art as a visual language depicting time, space, and spirituality. Line, shape, and symbols emerge within the space of her paintings as origins of energy—some loud and bold, some quiet and soft. The paintings become portals or labyrinths in which mark-making and visceral vulnerability meander through vastness and back again.
Press release and images via Catskills Gallery, NYC.
Installation photographs by Carl Gunhouse.
