Press release for Alexander DiJulio Gallery:
Alexander DiJulio is pleased to present Charis Ammon’s first New York solo exhibition, Where Do You Go When You Are On Your Way?. Featuring a selection of small paintings based on Ammon’s observations of the city surfaces she sees on her daily commute through urban landscapes, the show highlights moments and settings often overlooked or simply glimpsed and not dwelled upon— highway overpass flora or sidewalk graffiti or a view through a laundromat window. Ammon notes "the medial spaces of my day give me time to reflect. As I absorb the narratives held in the surfaces around me, I find my story also. These shared narratives remind me of how we, the people of the city, are held together in our shared experiences." Through unctuous brushwork, direct painted wet-on-wet in oils, Ammon deftly extracts beauty from the seemingly mundane.
While Ammon’s studio practice incorporates works on both macro and micro scales, Where Do You Go When You Are On Your Way? derives intimacy from the diminutive size of her canvases. The works - which are merely 8x10 inches at their largest - invite the viewer in for a closer view….no, even closer than that. In moving from work to work, the feeling of walking through a city (New York as it were, but it could really be anywhere) in a near reverie emerges through quick flashes. Be it a downward glance at the ankles of a pedestrian in front of you as in Shadow Beat, or the wet sidewalk cement tags in Birdsongs in Brooklyn or the skyward gazes through scaffolding as with Morning Sun, we are confronted with the innocuous impressions that quietly and collectively make up our understanding of urban life. Ammon has an almost Hopper-like ability to make paintings that seem as if they’ve always existed but through a direct painting application that emphasizes painterly marks over any kind of photographic realism.
