Jack Bell Gallery presents Black Moon Rising featuring Cullen Washington Jr..

Artist Statement:

My work is about abstraction – not about abstracting objects, but rather about how I experience the world and about my dialogue with the work in progress. In exploring the origins of the word abstraction, I found it to mean pull away or drag away. Within the context of my work, I think of abstraction as the taking away of material things or the theft of reality. With this notion, I think about the extraction of representation or ‘things’ in the work. This is why the new series of works are titled, ‘No-things’ or ‘nothing’ as a place of unlimited interpretation.

In both the Untitled series and the No-things series, I try to capture a snapshot of things before they are formed, still in an embryonic state of meaning, forming multiple fluid relationships. The possibilities in this place of ‘in-between’ness interests me. The works take on new directions, meanings and interpretations, and allow for a more open conversation to take place between the work and the viewer, unencumbered by a descriptive title.

Cullen Washington was born in 1972 in Alexandria, Louisiana, USA. He now currently lives and works in New York. Recent exhibitions include ‘Things in Themselves’, curated by Lauren Haynes, at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Upcoming exhibitions include ‘Black in the Abstract’, curated by Valerie Cassel Oliver, at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Jan 25 – March 23 2014, and ‘The Land Before Words’, curated by Lynne Cooney, at the Boston University Museum, Jan 24 – March 2014.