Larry Caveney's "Party Whites" series to open January 7th at the Swift

Artist Larry Caveney is returning his talents to the Martha Pace Swift Gallery with a show that is all about process , transformation and deconstruction. These muscular canvases are really more hanging sculpture than painting, built-up out of sculpted fabric, and the surfaces reworked in depth. An interesting detail about these canvases is that they have shown in the space before. In mid 2008, before the Gallery Space was dedicated or lit, the canvases were already displayed in the hallways of the building, but anyone seeing that show would be hard pressed to recognize the pieces. That is because Caveney has continued to work the surfaces, in a practice of moving forward through the arc of a longer set of processes, applied across a body of work.

The works original pallette of yellows, blues and reds and  became completely obscured through the addition of white paint. Then into these newly pristine topographical landscapes, Caveney began a new series of operations on the canvases adding in process color through collage. 

As the process continues to progress, His latest process involves sanding away image ,
weathering in the traces, in the way that mimics the forces of weathering and erosion
which shapes the world around us. 



Are the Party Whites finished?  Remembering the series original title, "Can't Say" it now seems oddly precient. Already within the show, there are some pieces moving towards new transformations, with the weathering and stripping away technique. However, thanks to careful documentation, we do know where they came from.

Watch the Party White's history and transformation here.

See you at the opening-
Wes