NEW YORK, NY.- Casey Kaplan is presenting “Jonathan Gardner: Drawings,” a presentation of seven recent graphite works on paper, launched this week and accessible via the gallery's Online Viewing Room, simultaneously exhibited at the gallery in the newly expanded viewing rooms through March 6, 2021.

Gardner’s (b. 1982, Lexington, KY) painting and drawing practice consists of imagined tableaus anchored by modern art histories, heavily influenced by the European Surrealists (1920-1950) and the Chicago Imagists (1966-1971). In this new series of works on paper, Gardner manipulates form using peculiar framing devices with collage techniques to transform quotidian leisurely pursuits into illusory worlds.

Beginning with preparatory drawings, Gardner states “I usually get the germ of an idea by drawing in a sketchbook, and then I use tracing paper to expand and experiment with the image. Using tracing paper allows me to combine elements and move them around freely from one drawing to another. I also photocopy drawings to shrink and enlarge them, letting me play with the sense of scale. By combining things that may have come from completely different trains of thought, I am able to surprise myself, and utilize chance as part of the process.”

Artworks such as “Reader in the mirror”, which depicts the reflection of a young woman reading a book in repose, utilize surreal framing devices often employed by artists like René Magritte in which illusions of thresholds into other dimensions and paintings within paintings challenge our realities. In “The Dressing Room,” the mirror that frames a nude couple is not only a tool of distortion, complicating the picture plane, but also it is a revealer of hidden truths - for a mirror is said not to lie. Absent of the bold colors typical of his paintings, Gardner uses graphite to boost contrast with each hyper-stylized line.

In “Portal,” the profile of a long-haired woman is silhouetted by a dark sphere set in a nautical wooden backdrop. The simple gesture of a mysterious ‘portal’ suggests a larger plot at play, never fully revealed.

Established within a mise-en-scène of iconographical movements, Gardner’s compositions integrate archetypes with the memory of a lived experience. His bathing scenes are populated by groups of nude figures lounging and at play in geometric, gridded tile surroundings with meandering subterranean pipes and sculptural steam clouds. Encouraging are the words of Henri Matisse, “What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject-matter...a soothing, calming influence on the mind, something like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.”