CY GAVIN

Made in Rome and New York from April through October of this year, these paintings visualizeforces of growth, decay, and resilience. Rather than depict conventional landscapes or cityscapes, theyinstead convey the experience of being in and of nature, addressing microcosmic and macrocosmicphenomena from waterborne algae to the movements of celestial bodies.

Highlights of the exhibition include Untitled (Wall of the Tiber) (all works 2023), a monumentalpainting of a cyclopean stone wall in Rome. The regularity of the structure’s black blocks isinterrupted by the varied forms of flowering plants that sprout from cracks and blossom across itssurface. Untitled (Pollarded white mulberry tree), another painting that contrasts the built environmentwith the vitality of the natural world, represents a street tree in blues and pinks, its branches cutback to shape its growth and its roots constrained by a rectangular cutout in the sidewalk. Untitled(Roadside with chicory and wild carrot) juxtaposes a profusion of vigorous roadside weeds in white,yellow, orange, and green with the monotone of the blacktop road in its lower register. And Untitled(Converging paths), painted with calligraphic gestures in an allover composition, pictures a crossroadsshaped by human passage amid an abundance of plant life.

Untitled (Blue-green algae), a painting dominated by deep greens, describes both the reflectionsof trees and other vegetation on a pond’s surface, and the saturated tones of algae that grow inbodies of warm, slow-moving water. Although they occur naturally, algal blooms can be toxic andoverwhelm their ecosystem, exacerbated by fertilizer runoff and rising temperatures linked to climatechange—making this a work concerned with both perceptual and ecological issues. Untitled (Humanheart) represents the chambers and valves of a disembodied heart, extending the artist’s subjects to human anatomy, and themes of life and death. Finally, Gavin’s attention shifts outward towardinterstellar space in Untitled (Binary stars), an interpretation of the cosmic ballet of two stars that aregravitationally bound to one another’s orbits.