Circus Gallery is pleased to present Steven Bankhead’s second solo exhibition entitled, Location Location Location.

Fourteen large paintings encircle the main gallery, creating a panoramic landscape of imagery. Each of these works, created over the last two years, is derived from images of broken windows. Sprayed acrylic through individual stencils create pieces that are at once a unique object and an implied multiple. A rich blackness creates a void, giving way to lines making their way across to the canvas edge. Shaping shards of glass, other evidence of Bankhead’s at once meticulous yet open-to-the-signs-of-the-medium working method creates softness where hard edge might be expected. These painterly moments infiltrate the creamy raw canvas and seem to push each piece into an action of past-tense timing or perhaps rather an instant after the blast. Whether a call to action or evidence of destruction, a relation between violence and abstraction is created.

In the mezzanine, a lone bench constructed from plywood and empty plastic milk crates sits conspicuously lower than the railing and out of sight of the paintings below. Titled Pretty Vacant, it operates on the one hand as a monumental sculpture that references the work from Bankhead’s last exhibition, while on the other “On the run” DIY furniture.

The phrase “location, location, location” is most commonly known as the “three most important rules in real estate.” Location is repeated three times for emphasis. And, as the phrase suggests, this exhibition lends itself to multilayered interpretations. The title may reference our location in the historical present. It could infer context and the inseparable link between location, objects and their meaning. Or, most pointedly, reference the titles of the paintings, each denoting unique riotous acts and through this specificity – their location. Whichever direction is taken (and there are others), the resonance is cumulative, building upon their interconnectedness.

Bankhead culls from his surroundings and the internet, interweaving cultural, historical and mythological subject matter into complex structures that take the form of installations, drawings, paintings and sculptures. He is a collector of imagery, deploying his source material to explore the ruins of modernism and its utopian ideas.

Steven Bankhead received his MFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2001. He was the recipient of the prestigious Lari Pittman award and the Otis Grant. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including group shows at Tiroler Kunstpavillon in Innsbrook, Austria, Co-Lab, Copenhagen, Denmark and at (s)language, MAK Center, Angles Gallery, and AndrewShire Gallery in Los Angeles. He recently had a solo exhibition at Galerie Andreas Binder in Munich, Germany. His work is in the collection of the Royal Danish Academy of Art as well as numerous private collections.