EVELYNE AXELL

EXPERIMENTS IN ART AND

TECHNOLOGY (E.A.T.) ARCHIVE

SYLVIA PALACIOS WHITMAN

MARK ALEXANDER

BABETTE MANGOLTE

PAUL P.

PENNY SLINGER

ROSEMARIE CASTORO

DEVIN LEONARDI

NICOLA L.

MARGARETE JAKSCHIK

ANNA MOLSKA

XANTI SCHAWINSKY

ZOFIA RYDET

EDWARD KRASINKSI &

EUSTACHY KOSSAKOWSKI

LENORA DE BARROS

GINA PANE

DEVIN LEONARDI

Mandan Graves, 2010 Oil on gesso board 34.9 x 45 cm (13 !” x 17 !”)

A hopeful sense of weighing the once positive and liberating, almost innocent notion of progress against the contemporary alienating force of change, is at the heart of Devin Leonardi’s paintings. In an e"ort to reveal the persistence of the “modern” as a nascent force within American history Leonardi’s work looks back to terrains of the nineteenth century Americana, to landscape painting, to pictorial narratives of the conquest of the West with its collaterals, victims and its repressed memory. Anonymous Western tropes are set next to the appearance of the Nude in Leonardi’s work: the strangely timid and rudimentary presence of the Nude verges away from the other motifs and in the process eliminating subject matter. Leonardi’s work is in prestigious collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.

The Captive, 2013 Oil on canvas 23.75 x 17.75 inches (60.33 x 45.09 cm)

Strains of Happiness, 2014 Oil on canvas17.75” x 23.75”

Above:Strains of Happiness, 2014 Oil on canvas17.75” x 23.75”

Right: Civil History, 2011 Oil on canvas, framed. 44 x 34 cm (17 ” x 13 ”)

In order to better understand a kind of American historical identity Leonardi moved from New York City to Montana and in a e"ort to revive the genre of history painting he has shifted from the use of watercolor to oil. Essentially, Leonardi has now condensed his narratives in more minimal, allegorical and non-site tableaux. People in these paintings become mere shadows and the light seems to come from an artificial source connecting the “sentimental panorama” with the unforgiving modern reality of the photographic. More than ever before, the photographic image itself has a ghost-like presence in these paintings. They are elegiac and mournful, even morbid, surprising yet familiar, intimacy works against modern freshness. Despite the disparity of subject matter they deliver some elemental feeling.

The Plains near Anaconda, 2011 Oil on canvas on panel 33 x 43.2 cm (12 #” x 17”)

I’m always amazed at how easily Eakins legacy is ignored by the contemporary art-world, especially when you consider his importance as a link between the traditions of European Academicism and the early roots of American Modernism. Put simply, Eakins lost his job as the head of America’s leading art academy because he and his students were taking photos of one another in the nude. This act of photographing was, at the time, genuinely outrageous, particularly when it came to his female students. This little bit of history is, in my opinion, the key to understanding the degree to which modernity arose consciously only to end up as a kind of reflexive posture.

Devin Leonardi

1888, 2011 Oil on canvas on panel 29.8 x 40 cm (11 !” x 15 !”)

The peculiar traditionalism and classicism of painting carries constantly its own contradiction: painting needs tradition and history. Leonardi seeks a way of becoming more comfortable and conscious with the history of painting, accommodating the nervousness of depicting sentimental images of Americana for example, - instead of using history against itself as sheer “shock value” and pastiche (as done in many painterly approached since the 1980s).

It is a search for a completely new way conditioned by a high degree of cautiousness, negation and negotiation, and then a new attempt again. The artist sometimes approaches a painting motif several times all over again, until this fine balance of a new kind of history painting is achieved and settled for in the artists mind and conviction.

Expulsion from Eden, 2013 Oil on canvas17.75 x 23.75 inches (45.09 x 60.33 cm)

Untitled, 2010 Oil on canvas on panel 34.93 x 27.31 cm (13 !” x 10 !”)

True Fissure, 2013 Oil on canvas 23.75 x 17.75 inches (60.33 x 45.09 cm)

Devin Leonardi’s paintings evoke a relatively unusual influence: the precise aesthetic of ninteenth-century American realists such as Thomas Eakins...this exacting style produces a sense of stasis when combines with straightforward, simple subject matter including landscapes dominated by sky or lone figures within interiors...Leonardi’s paintings implement the comparatively labor-intensive medium of painting to capture seemingly arbitrary and random moments.

Britany SalsburyArtFORUM.COM,

Critics’ Picks, 04.04.2011

Jenny Chrisman, 2009 Acrylic on paper 19.75 x 12.5 inches (50.17 x 31.75 cm)

With these pieces I worked to illuminate the nascent roots of modernism, which appear to lie just beneath the surface of the original photograph. After the civil war, Americans became obsessed with the idea that the country had lost its early republican innocence, and as a result the whole concept of “childhood” became a conscious one. This also had to do with the fact that the “constant change” of industrialism made youth and innocence seem fleeting and therefore desirable. As the nineteenth century drew to a close, also budding youth and nascent adulthood became objects of fascination; think Huckleberry Finn, Alice in Wonderland or, more specifically, the photographs taken by Eakins’ students.

Devin LeonardiRevival of A!ection, 2013 Oil on Canvas 23.75 x 17.75 inches (60.33 x 45.09 cm)

The motifs he targets and the atmosphere he captures in his intimate, intense versions of the American epic, go back to a time before the ‘modernisms’ of the 20th century that are referred to so casually by many of today’s young artists.

In an e"ort to reveal the persistence of the “modern” as a nascent force within American history Leonardi’s work looks back to terrains of the nineteenth century Americana, to landscape painting, to pictorial narratives of the conquest of the West with its collaterals, victims and of course its repressed memory. But unlike his past work, in which Leonardi gave a lot of attention to the political details and accuracies of the sites he was painting as a kind of historical conservation, he now enters a new realm, a new dimension of painting. Anonymous Western tropes are set next to the appearance of the Nude in Leonardi’s work: the strangely timid and rudimentary presence of the Nude verges away from the other motifs and in the process eliminating subject matter.

Pittsburg, the Great Strike 1877, 2007 Acrylic on paper 12.5 x 14.75 inches (31.75 x 37.47 cm)

Leonardi’s paintings are from now on allegories for the complicated relationship between photography and painting itself: they elaborate with subtle atmospheric force, - they are almost entirely light and atmosphere -, on the wound inflicted on painting by the raise of photography in France in the 1850s, which marked for all times the end of painting. And although painting since explored all sorts of new possibility of modernist legitimation, it – so reflected by Leonardi – never resolved itself and became burdened with guilt. Modernity in painting, so the artist, is a display of trauma induced by photography. The culminating exposure of which found a stage in Abstract Expressionism in its cultural schizophrenia and epileptic fits of existentialism.

Above:Pittsburg, the Great Strike 1877, 2007 Acrylic on paper 12.5 x 14.75 inches (31.75 x 37.47 cm)

Right:Doe Run, 2007 Acrylic on paper 11 x 15 inches (27.94 x 38.10 cm)

Untitled (Political Cartoon), 2008 Ink on paper 38.1 x 27.94 cm (15” x 11”)

Untitled Cartoon (Less We See), 2013 Ink on paper

Untitled (Political Cartoon), 2008 Ink on paper 27.94 x 38.1 cm (11” x 15”)

While the artist’s painting processes are very time-invested and ultra cautious, the work on the cartoon ink-drawings are a far more immediate outlet for Leonardi’s contemporary sensibility to American politics. Inspired by the New Zealand cartoonist Sir David Alexander Cecil Low, Devin Leonardi drew a group of caricatures when the economic downturn began in 2008. We see sharply humorous sketches such as “As the Bountiful Waters Recede a Few Old Wrecks Come Into View”, “Lehman Brothers” and “Bail Out” of genuine artistic freedom. Their style and genre status constantly shifts between the urgency of the political subject matter and a more general artistic vision of the draughtsman connecting this group to his painterly oeuvre.

Born 1981, Evanston, ILLives and works in New York and Montana

SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

SOLO

2012 “The Source is the Goal“ ALTMAN SIEGEL, San Francisco2011 “Sentimental Panorama“ BROADWAY 1602, New York2009 “Shallow Bower,” Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco2007 “Concordia,” Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY2005 Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY2003 Wood Street Gallery, Chicago, IL

GROUP

2011 “Germany Is Your America“, Co-curated by Michael Bracewell, BROADWAY 1602, New York, NY2010 “...and then there was X,” Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, CA“Inaugural Show,” Broadway 1602, New York, NYThe Armory Show, New York, NY2009 “On From Here,” Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY NADA Art Fair, Miami, FL2005 “The General’s Jamboree,” Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY2004 “They Think I’m One of Them,” Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY2003 “New Work,” Cooper Union School of Art, New York, NY“Annual Winter Exhibition,” Wood Street Gallery, Chicago, IL

COLLECTIONS

The Whitney Museum of American Art

GalleristAnke Kempkes

DirectorAniko Erdosi

Head Archivist Lauren Pascarella

Assistant ArchivistOdyssea Rigau

Publication and DesignStephanie Marie Garcia

© Devin Leonardi and BROADWAY1602 PUBLICATIONS New York, 2014

DEVIN LEONARDI

The Woods are Black, but the Sky is Still Blue, 2014 Oil on canvas11.25” x 23.5”

Spark of Decency, 2014 Oil on canvas11.25” x 23.5”