Goldfinch is proud to present “Leeway,” our third solo exhibition with Sherwin Ovid. Born in Trinidad and based in Chicago, Ovid’s paintings explore the interface between the built and natural world. He investigates different approaches to spatial organization using a combination of precise, almost trompe l’oeil-like painted renderings, areas of poured paint that create marbled effects, and sharp, angular planes (painted with iridescent pigment) that appear to change color, recede or come forward based on the placement of light and the viewer’s position before them. Pigment, resin, bubbles, and dirt are some of the materials that Ovid accumulates on the surface while constructing the illusionistic spatial environments of his works.

In Ovid’s new paintings, partial glimpses of the pictorial and representational are situated within an array of flat and modeled compositional elements and are often enveloped by formal systems of abstraction. Ovid also makes use of the language of rational geometric diagrams, but upends them by making improvisational gestures through pours of slow-drying liquid mediums. This produces cascading layers of paint that act in contention to the rigid structures. Mixtures of contrasting iridescent color create visual vortexes, while undulating waves of marbled visual patterns catapult the viewer through different perceptual registers and visual scales.

Artist’s Bio:

Born in Trinidad, Sherwin Ovid earned his Bachelors degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a Lincoln Fellow in 2013 at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he received his MFA. He currently teaches as an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ovid has collaborated on art production with Lee Daniel’s Netflix feature The Deliverance, Lena Waithe’s Showtime drama The Chi, and Jordan Peele’s Monkey Paw Studio remake of Candyman, directed by Nia DaCosta. Ovid has exhibited with Demon Leg in New York and has participated in group shows at the Chicago Cultural Center, Lubeznik Center for the Arts, UIS Visual Arts Gallery, 6018North, Randy Alexander Gallery, Goldfinch Gallery, Gallery 400, Prison Neighborhood Arts Project, Humboldt Park Boathouse Gallery, University of Wisconsin, Cleve Carney Art Gallery, Julius Caesar, Haitian American Museum of Chicago and Iceberg Projects in Evanston. He was published in New American Painters in 2016 and in 2021 as a noteworthy feature, and in 2020 was included among New City Magazine’s Breakout Artists. This is Ovid’s third solo exhibition with Goldfinch.

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Tags: Chicago, East Garfield Park, Goldfinch, Leeway, Sherwin Ovid, Sherwin Ovid: Leeway