Jordan Casteel, Marigold, 2024, Graphite on paper, 14 x 11 inches

Casey Kaplan is pleased to present Works on Paper, a group exhibition featuring new and early works by twenty-six artists from the gallery program: Igshaan Adams, Kevin Beasley, Matthew Brannon, Sydney Cain, Nathan Carter, Jordan Casteel, Jason Dodge, Judith Eisler, Jonathan Gardner, Liam Gillick, Giorgio Griffa, David Huffman, Brian Jungen, Caroline Kent, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Mateo López, Jonathan Monk, Diego Perrone, Kaveri Raina, Matthew Ronay, Simon Starling, David Thorpe, Johanna Unzueta, Ella Walker, Garth Weiser, and Amanda Williams.

For the first time at the gallery, an exhibition centers working on paper as a way to encounter an artist’s process from a different point of view, yielding a taxonomy of possibilities from one common support. Works on Paper depicts a kind of genealogy – the moment of an idea’s conception, its gestation, evolution, and liberation into the world with a life of its own, unbeholden but inextricably related to an artist’s larger practice.

In their varied approaches, the artists included in the exhibition situate working on paper within their practice in as many ways: a place for daily meditative drawing; an unburdened playground to experiment with color and composition; an interstitial space to recover between bouts of exertion; a summation of intricate research and patiently rendered detail; a private sanctuary to work out of sight. In both the sweeping, gestural marks of abstraction and the delicate linework of figuration, the hand of the artist affirms its presence, honoring and at times subverting the academic traditions of drawing and draftsmanship. Soluble inks, gouaches, and watercolors mingle with these exercises in frenzied scratches and gentle gradients, breaking with convention and planar perspective.