Liam Everett: some days later,

Altman Siegel is delighted to present Liam Everett’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. After a year spent working in France, Everett returns to the Bay Area with an exhibition of new paintings and a sitespecific installation activating the façade of the gallery with a large mural.

Everett’s painting practice, while formally abstract, is deeply rooted in the language of natural light, the scale of the Northern California landscape, and the shifting conditions of the environment within his studio. The exuberantly colored paintings are built slowly, accruing layers of information that both recede into deep space while simultaneously appearing to project towards the viewer. Everett revels in this tension, exploring the reflective and transparent qualities of the medium. The paintings reveal themselves slowly with different moments of color rising into prominence as the light changes throughout the day.

In creating this series upon his return from France, Everett’s attention was drawn to the horizon line of the rough blue-grey Pacific Ocean meeting the fog-heavy Northern California sky. Incorporating a multiplicity of inspirations from biodynamic agriculture to the slow pacing and metaphysical themes of the late films of Andrei Tarkovsky, Everett builds his paintings layer by layer, incorporating elements of performance into his practice, allowing a gesture or color to move from one painting into the next. The end result is an exhibition of distinct works that inform and build on each other.

In addition to the exhibition inside the gallery, Liam Everett created a site-specific mural covering the facade of 1150 Minnesota Street commissioned by Institute of Contemporary Art San José and Minnesota Street Project. When envisioning the gallery facade mural, Everett subverted his typical approach. Often incorporating elements of the natural world (clay, salt, dirt) into his paintings, he reversed the process by bringing the studio outdoors; wrapping the facade of the gallery with images of his process in action and with a glimpse of the previous life of the paintings while in progress in the studio. Black and white photographs of the studio in action provide broader context of the artistic process for viewers, while color images zoom in on details of the brushstrokes and impressions that comprise the paintings. Blanketing the Bay: Liam Everett, a facade project collaboration between ICA San José + Altman Siegel + Minnesota Street Project, offers a safe, socially distanced art experience broadening the audiences that can engage with outstanding contemporary artistic practice in the public realm. The facade project will be on view from May 13 through August 28, 2021. Blanketing the Bay: Liam Everett is generously supported by Andy and Deborah Rappaport, Robin Wright, and Daniel Lurie and Becca Prowda. Special thanks to Jeff Gardner design. Photography by Emilía Turner.

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