DODGE Gallery

DODGE gallery is pleased to present The Thingness of Color, a group exhibition with four artists: Sarah Cain, Franklin Evans, Matthew Rich, Cordy Ryman. 

Color is an unfixed property that is influenced by light, context, and the perception of the beholder. The notion that color is something that cannot be proven, given the relativity of its shifting nature, is fascinating. Albers made color live; through simplistic abstractions he impressed upon the viewer the action of color, the vibrations and manifestations of color fields that are activated by a kind of meditative, pointed focus. If color is impacted by context and is itself active, how does it exist as an object, a thing? The Thingness of Color is a bright, playful investigation of the object-hood of color. Each of the artists invited to participate in the exhibition address color as a physical entity, whether literally shaping space with color, or working with color as shape.

Sarah Cain is presenting large-scale works on paper that are populated by color blocks, stripes, and shapes that are defined by color and hold the same presence and boundaries as objects incorporated into the compositions. Franklin Evans is including an installation of colored strips that will visually splice and literally segment a portion of the gallery. Matthew Rich is presenting frameless works of paper, each forming a cohesive yet amorphous abstract shape that has been individuated by color and aligned at the seems. Cordy Ryman is presenting stacked wood objects that have been swathed in color and are both contingent upon and reshaping architectural space.

Working both intuitively and purposefully, these artists employ color to shape and shift space whether on a picture plane, as an object, or in the space between. There is a frank, forthright nature to these works, leaning more towards actuality than perception, but their play with color as a primary subject affords the slippage in between. 

Sarah Cain lives and works in Los Angeles. Cain received her BA from The San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. Cain has been the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and the SFMOMA’s SECA Art Award. She has exhibited both nationally at Anthony Meier Fine Arts, Sara Meltzer Gallery, Los Angeles Nomadic Division, Orange Country Museum of Art, Aspen Art Museum; and internationally at Kunst PLUS, Germany, Grimmuseum, Germany, Seiler + Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Zurich and Belvedere Museum, Austria. Cain’s work is in several public collections including of SFMOMA, Flag Art Foundation, and Martin Magulies Warehouse.

Franklin Evans, born in Reno, NV, lives and works in New York. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from University of Iowa. His work has been exhibited at: The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY; and Sue Scott Gallery, New York, NY. He has been selected for residencies by The Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program, LMCC Workspace: 120 Broadway, and Yaddo. His work is in the permanent collections of El Museo del Barrio (New York), The Weatherspoon Art Museum, The Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California, Riverside, and Progressive Art Collection.

Matthew Rich received his BA from Brown University and his MFA from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited at samsøn, Boston, MA, devening projects + editions, Chicago, IL; Galerie oqbo, Berlin, Germany; Baer Ridgway Exhibitions, San Francisco, CA and Project Row Houses, Houston, TX. In 2010, Rich was named a James and Audrey Foster Prize Finalist at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston and he attended Skowhegan School.

Cordy Ryman lives and works in New York. He attended the School of Visual Arts where he received his BFA. Ryman has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally at Conner Contemporary, Washington, D.C., DCKT Contemporary, New York, NY, Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin, TX, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago, IL, TWIG, Brussels, Belgium, Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City, CA, P.S. 1, New York, NY, and Gilleleje, Denmark. Ryman’s work is in various public collections including, Microsoft Art Collection, Rubell Family Collection, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL.