Bubbles

That Lewis sets upon his project on unprimed jute, a coarse woven cloth in production for millennia, materially heightens the energy of his painterly vocabulary. His most forceful gestures – those sinewy ribbons of color – mirror jute’s fibrous quality; and in turn, his stains, sprays, and smudges disperse over its fuzzy surface, which Lewis brushes into that of a fine sweater before he begins painting. Commonly used to make rope, bags, and other durable products, it is an appropriate stage on which Lewis can translate innumerably fierce painterly events, tangling them into pictorial space. And this is enacted in the literal sense too: His paintings get dragged around, rubbed against, and impressed upon by physical exertion, as much as they undergo the irreversibility of pigmented materials on their unprimed surfaces. All of his paintings are lived through, having undergone necessary physical and creative duress.

From the text by Max Maslansky, Galerie nächst St. Stephan Rosemarie Schwarzwälder, 2022. Read the full press release