SLATE Contemporary is pleased to present A Place of Wonder, showcasing contemporary abstract paintings by Kim Manfredi, and sculptures by Peter St. Lawrence, that quietly invite the viewer to explore magical places and wondrous forms.
Manfredi and St. Lawrence’s earliest work focused more on the human form. As their work became increasingly abstract, both artists found a freedom in relying on their intuition, rather than intention. By loosing themselves in the material and the process of creating, they discovered a way of seeing that is just beyond knowing. This degree of ambiguity is what engages the viewer. The works hint at the human experience, yet invite the beholder go somewhere completely new.
Both artists are masters of their tools which allows them to take advantage of the opportunity when inspiration strikes. They let the material guide their hands to arrive at a final form. This process leaves room for surprises and discoveries that open the work up to emotional potency.
Peter St. Lawrence’s sculptures are hand built, one handful of clay at a time, from the base up, giving him an opportunity to add and subtract on his way up. As he moves around the three-dimensional piece, he is confronted with surprising relationships of form and contour. Leaving room for improvisation allows him to stay completely engaged with the piece during the process of creation. There is a lyrical quality to his work as he finds harmony in a balance of positive and negative space. A quirky sense of humor can be found in his occasional anthropomorphic forms. The raw and glazed surfaces and tactility of the objects show just enough hand to remind the viewer of the physical process of making that brought them into the world. For St. Lawrence, a piece is finished when his hand no longer reaches out to resolve anything within it.
Kim Manfredi also works in an improvisational way, allowing the first marks to speak back to her about what needs to happen next. Her intuitive form of expression defies conventional categories, employing so many modes of painting that it cannot be reduced to any one. She uses gesture, throwing her whole body into the making of larger-than-life marks, yet the work looks nothing like typical “gestural abstracts” that are made up of a constellation of brush strokes. She uses spray-paint and stencils, but avoids figurative motifs. She plays with surface pattern, but is not making pattern-painting. She is inspired by the landscape—especially the desert views that whizz past her on her daily bicycle rides—yet literal references to mountains or horizons in her work remain few and far between. Manfredi’s works are not depictions of anything. Nonetheless, they do evoke an illusion of forms in space, creating a magical immersive world unto itself that viewers are invited to enter and explore.
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