MATTHEW FEYLD & RUSSELL TYLER
Paintings

October 29 to November 29, 2015

Ampersand is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Matthew Feyld and Russell Tyler. At surface, the pairing is at once harmonious and counterbalanced in the sense that both artists are currently investigating the relationship between line and shape, color and the materiality of the paint and substrates with which they are working. We can isolate figures like Agnes Martin, Ellsworth Kelly and Josef Albers as influences. Both artists will admit as much. But there is always something deeper at play in the origin of an artist’s working style and the paintings he or she currently chooses to make. “I make marks on the surfaces and then I spend a lot of time editing them, little by little,” Feyld recently said in an interview, “Sometimes a couple of millimeters can make or break a painting.” For those familiar with Feyld’s earlier works, populated as they are with a set of figures that are novelistic in scope, this attention to the effect of millimeters is magnified many times over. The degree of reduction would seem radical if it were not for the poetic essence that exists in both styles, his then and now. The same is true of Tyler’s point of arrival. Gone are the strange faces, figures and allusions to symbology, but what remains is the energy of paint in motion, controlled as it is within the confines of squares and rectangles. It is as though both artists have the entire room at hand, but for the moment they are choosing to work only within its corners.    

Russell Tyler lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and BFA from Concordia University in Montreal. He has had solo exhibitions at DCKT Contemporary in NYC, Freight + Volume in NYC, B15 Gallery in Copenhagen, Fouladi Projects in San Francisco and EbersMoore Gallery in Chicago. His paintings have received press coverage in Artforum, The New York Times, Hyperallergic, NY Arts Magazine and La Monde. 

Matthew Feyld lives and works between Brooklyn, NY and Montreal, QC. He has had solo exhibitions at The Waiting Room at 57w57arts in NYC, Galeri Ephemere in Montreal, QC and Galleri Nicola Hugo in Paris. Recent press includes an online interview (here) on Copenhagen Contemporary Art.