For his second solo exhibition with the Marlborough, Greg Bogin maintains a laser-focus on the duo-toned shaped canvas. Entitled all together, the group of paintings, in palette and form, evokes the nostalgic uplift of vintage children’s television and its attendant message of inclusiveness and a common good.
Bogin’s career-spanning commitment to slight variations in color and form are often quite subtle. As such, the appearance here of dramatic cutaways and interior voids in the paintings feels like a rupture of real magnitude. These spaces enlist the wall itself as a component of the composition and draw our attention to the fact of the canvas pulled taught over graceful curves and layer upon layer of sprayed pigment and clearcoat.
A majority of the work engages the traditional, landscape-format rectangle. In removing large areas of the surface, Bogin infiltrates painting’s established parameters and nods to the current erosion of societal structures. While always pushing himself toward incremental innovation, the artist has, in this way, begun a healthy interrogation of his own motives. What does it mean to make these joyful, lovingly-crafted objects in a time of political upheaval? Is it permissible? Ethical? all together’s answer is to fight the gloom with goodwill, and darkness with dayglo dazzle and an implied message of hope.
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