Landon Metz
Come Together

De Brock presents ‘Come Together’, New York-based artist Landon Metz’s second solo exhibition with the gallery, featuring his latest suite of dichromatic diptychs.

Grounded in the language of minimalism, color-field painting and abstraction, and heavily influenced by his rural Arizonan upbringing, Metz approaches his painting practice as a meditative performance. Washes of acrylic pigment are applied to raw canvas, laid flat so as to soak up the dye during a length-drying process, during which time Metz is able to manually maneuver the rose pink and scarlet red pigment into his signature organic amorphous shapes.

An entirely self-taught, autodidactic artist, Metz turned to art history as his primary educational tool. Enamored by the painting practices of acclaimed color-field pioneers such as Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, swathes of exposed canvas surround his floating forms, placing prominence on the often overlooked negative space. Additionally, his approach to abstraction is akin to Georgia O’Keefe’s late-career depictions of those same outback landscapes that are an enduring inspiration for Metz.

Embracing chance and uncertainty, the accepted appearance of the artist’s hand in the painting process is intentionally obscured. Metz’s stylish silhouettes pulsate with varying shades and hues, their edges stained deeper due to the saturation of the dyes, and increasing in lightness towards their center. The repetition of shapes in compositional sequence imbues the artworks with a rhythmic quality, recalling such natural phenomena as desert dunes, waves, clouds and the rock formations of his native state. Connotations are also conjured to the worlds of dance choreography and musical recital, with Metz himself having learned to read and play music from a young age.

An engagement with the potential of an expanded picture plane, as well as the artist’s acute spatial sensitivity, sees Metz’s pigmented forms frequently break free from the confines of the canvas. The paintings, therefore, question their supposed scale and placement in space, reimagining any associated limitations and allowing for an innate site-responsivity normally reserved for sculpture or installation artworks.

For enquiries, please contact info@debrockgallery.com