Chords | Shawn Kuruneru

Eleven years ago and a day, Shawn Kuruneru opened his first solo show with David Petersen Gallery. Entitled Landscapes, the exhibition included two components, both borne from the artist's drawing practice. On the walls hung eight paintings of ink poured, brushed and tossed on raw canvas; and on the floor, an installation of tiny stones, inked in black and arranged in a large rectangle on the site of which two of the paintings were created. 

Eleven years and a day later, Kuruneru opens Chords, an exhibition of six paintings that evince his continued commune with color, material, repetition, and movement as well as his long-standing dialogues with NY Abstract Expressionism, traditional Chinese landscape painting and his own formative comic drawings. Kuruneru’s undertaking is further articulated by a relationship with his own body, the length of his arm and the space between him and the canvas, the rotating and twisting of his wrist, and the control maintained by his hand. As if playing an instrument, each Kuruneru canvas is made with an economy of notes - color and shape - that still contain an infinite number of possibilities amongst them. Beginning with a chromatic palette of varying hue, tint, and value, Kuruneru applies aqueous acrylic paint that is absorbed by and embedded in the threads of the raw canvas. The shapes created by the artist share several characteristics - organic and elemental, yet delineated and intentional - as if from the same genus. The all-over compositions of these shapes reacting to one another by abutting, layering, interlocking, and generating new shapes and spaces between them are orchestral vibrations of tempo and tenor. Harmonic leitmotifs of synchronizing flats and sharps suggest a planned and plotted design, and yet these arrangements are freely improvised, leaving open the chance for color to escape its border with a flourish.

Summer Gallery Hours: Friday - Saturday 1-4pm + by appointment