James Fuentes will present John McAllister at this year’s ADAA Art Show at the Park Avenue Armory in New York, ahead of the artist’s solo exhibition with the gallery in Los Angeles. Spanning his full range of panoramic, rectangular, and tondo formats as well as the artist’s recognizable pictures-within-pictures, both large and small, McAllister’s new body of work carries forward his ongoing exercise in perception with renewed confidence.
Through his paintings, McAllister embarks on an evolving dialogue with the natural environment that surrounds his studio in Florence, Massachusetts. Riding for miles on his bike, the works are created through a process of absorption that begins beyond the studio. Rather than sketching the landscape or collecting physical fragments for later reference, McAllister reaches for the sublime sense of awe that resides in the beauty of nature, allowing it to ferment into a perennial vision in his mind’s eye. Returning to the studio, he composes imagined vistas that channel those sensations of being immersed in wilderness.
McAllister’s palette diverges from the naturalistic; saturated in vibrating pinks, purples, oranges, blues, and greens. Recalling the inflections of Jean-Édouard Vuillard, Odilon Redon, or Pierre Bonnard, McAllister’s compositions are suspended between the familiar and phenomenal. As the image forms, nature acts as an armature for light and color to settle into. Plant-life is filtered through intricate geometries, bodies of water contain a tranquil luminosity, and the horizon line rests between lush vegetation. The work itself becomes a site of transport, taking on new dimensions to be pollinated by the imagination.
McAllister welcomes an experience with, rather than a knowledge of, the coexistence of oppositional forces such as growth and decay, abundance and scarcity, proliferation and pollution. In this way, each brushstroke draws attention to the image as a construction. Following new tributaries, rolling hills, clustered forests, and lined fields, the works also suggest the agrarian manipulation of pastoral land. Just as nature contorts to germinate and overtake manicured land, McAllister aspires to be a beholder of, rather than a mirror to, its infinite rapture.
The ADAA Art Show | Park Avenue Armory, New York | Booth A2
On View November 2-5, 2023
