The Bike Room is pleased to present Milk and Water, Paintings by Katherine Jost and Leslie Greene. Merging at the confluence of spontaneity and deliberation, each artist rides a current of liquid abstraction. Together, they offer a churning blend as homogenous as oil and water – their trajectories whirlpool in and spew apart, each painter reclaiming bits of debris collected along the way.

Katherine Jost explores a moody range of tainted whites in these new paintings. Images submerge thickly into murky depths. Fluid substances take shape as metaphors, and then dissolve. Some works seem purely abstract; others veil and reveal bobbing forms so illusory that we seek to rediscover them over and over. Viscous smears, at once milk and flesh, shape-shift from a baby’s crown to engorged breasts. Finally, they recede back into unbiased brushstrokes of gesso incised with crayon. Jost delves into a process of subjective association, in which “emotional gaps are impregnated with personal fiction.” She states, “I reference individual experiences which can be perceived as universal, such as conceiving and birthing human life.

Leslie Greene’s quenching watercolors are imbued with the sharp clarity that daylight brings to shallow waters. Crisp broad-stroked patterns are erected and then fractured. Plaids and checks provide scaffolding to organize watery moments of whimsy and negotiation. While Greene’s titles suggest possible allusions – Chemistry, Tuba, Liminal, Ash – the paintings are rigorous abstractions whose material and spatial investigations align, at heart, with Kandinsky’s treatise, Concerning the Spiritual In Art. Greene’s process, like automatic writing, is intuitive. Yet one senses a measured scrutiny that informs each choice – searching for the meaning of a hard or diluted edge, the spatial impact of cut paper or the nuanced saturation of the color yellow.

Katherine Jost, originally from Milwaukee Wisconsin, lives and works in Chicago. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she teaches in the Department of Painting and Drawing, and in the Early College Program. Solo and group shows include the Hyde Park Art Center and the College of DuPage in Chicago, Berliner Liste, Germany, and ArtExhibitionLink in Rome, Italy.

Leslie Greene lives and works in Paris, France. She exhibits internationally. Venues include Salon Realite Nouvelles and Galerie Octobre, in Paris, and Gallery La fabrique in Ivry-Sur-Seine. Greene’s work was recently published in a children’s book in collaboration with writer Sandra Cisneros.

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Tags: Exhibition, Katherine Jost, Leslie Greene, Project Space, Rogers Park, The Bike Room