May 26 - June 27
Opening Reception: Saturday, May 26, 6-8 PM
Irvine Contemporary is pleased to announce Robert Mellor’s second solo exhibition, New Scenarios, opening Saturday, May 26. Robert Mellor’s new series of paintings boldly expands his innovative fusion of hard-edge organic composition techniques and original color harmonies.
Robert Mellor, Lithe, 2007. Acrylic on canvas on panel. 48 x 40 in. The word “scenario” originally referred to the instructions on the back of painted theater scenery used as directions for actors entering a “scene.” Robert Mellor’s New Scenarios can be viewed as new propositions for visual enactment by the viewer, each work providing cues for engaging with the composition, layer by layer, edge by edge, line by line, color by color. While it can be said that any work of art comes alive as art by a viewer’s active engagement, Mellor foregrounds this relationship by composing works of arresting beauty that compel viewers to re-enact the process of composition with the artist.
In this new series of paintings, Mellor often combines references abstracted from landscape and organic forms, city scapes and architecture, Japanese woodblock prints, and cascading fabric from fashion design in totally new ways. His astonishing and original color harmonies command attention and continually reward viewers who take a contemplative pause and convert compositional space into time. Mellor is also the edge-master, sculpting visual space with his hard-edge lines and interplay of forms, working at the edge of figuration and abstraction, building paintings from multiple layers that push the works into three dimensions as substantial objects in their own right. Mellor’s New Scenarios are a set of enticements and seductions for viewers that make a bold, affirmative statement for new directions in painting today.
Robert Mellor has an MFA from Claremont University in California. He began his gallery exhibition career in Los Angeles, and now lives in works in Chatham, VA, near Washington, DC.

IRVINE CONTEMPORARY
1412 14th St ., NW, Washington, DC 20005
Gallery Hours: Tues. - Sat. 11-6 pm, and by appointment
www.irvinecontemporary.com<
(202) 332-8767
Email: info@irvinecontemporary.com

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