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Installation view, New Traditionalists , Martos Gallery, New York, 2012

Jess Fuller,  Mañanifesto , 2012, acrylic, fabric dye and canvas, 65 x 57 x 9 in

B. Wurtz,  Collection #5 , 1999, wood, metal, 35 mm transparencies, buttons, thread, 94 x 50 x 50 in

Jess Fuller,  Portrait of a Young man , 2012, fabric dye and canvas, 15 x 12 x 3.25 in

Justin Adian,  Loveless , 2011, oil enamel on canvas and ester foam, 27 x 27 x 2.5 in

Leif Ritchey,  Lemon Light,  2011, mixed media on fabric, 54 x 146 in

B. Wurtz,  10 - Slide Cube (from series) , 1979, 35 mm slides, dimensions variable

B. Wurtz,  10 - Slide Cube (detail), 1979, 35 mm slides, dimensions variable

Justin Adian,  Jezebel , 2012, oil enamel on canvas and ester foam, 34 x 100 x 5 in

Leif Ritchey,  Dancing Buildings , 2011, acrylic and fabric on canvas, 64 x 54 in

PRESS RELEASE:

Martos Gallery is pleased to present New Traditionalists, a group exhibition featuring works by American artists Justin Adian, Jess Fuller, Leif Ritchey, and B. Wurtz, organized by Mary Grace Wright.

Justin Adian (b. 1976, Fort Worth, TX) manipulates painterly surfaces into playful psychosexual conglomerations. Canvas is wrapped tightly around bulbous upholsterer's foam and sprayed with sleek industrial paint, its contours overlapping in tantalizing ways.

Jess Fuller’s (b. 1972, Portland, ME), hand dyed fabric paintings have evolved into plush sculptural reliefs. These distressed canvases are both stuffed and dismembered, exploiting and exposing the material’s structural limits. Fuller presents these sprawling, colorful hides in various formats, shape- shifting from wall to floor, image to text.

Leif Ritchey (b. 1975 Ann Arbor, MI) uses chance operations and intuition to dictate materials and compositions in his otherwise formally conservative paintings. Owing to its discarded fabrics, papers, plastics, each work could have only come to be in its particular time and place. This clairvoyant encounter results in assemblages eliciting tangles of narrative both concrete and imagined.

B. Wurtz (b. 1948, Pasadena, CA) personalizes mass-produced objects, refashioning the formal strategies of constructivism to suit his own modest, introspective vision. This exhibition contains similar works spanning from 1979 to 1999, exemplifying his long-term exploration of recurring motifs. The use of nostalgic triggers (the suggestion of Christmas ornaments, the obsolete technology of 35mm slides) within a mechanized structure evokes artifacts both ancient and futuristic.