Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Busby Electric, a solo exhibition by South Carolina-based artist James Busby, and his second collaboration with the gallery. Consisting of a series of intimately scaled abstract works on panel, some as small as ten by eight inches, in a palette of black and white tonalities marked by occasional hints of color, the works are created using primarily gesso, graphite, cement, and spray paint with small touches of oil or acrylic paint. These paintings—some tondos, others rectangular, occasionally displayed on wooden shelves—explore Neo-Geo concepts and the relationship between material and surface through a sentimental framework. The exhibition's title refers to Busby’s father’s eponymously named motor repair shop. Many of the pieces in the show are created from panel works that Busby previously made, was unsatisfied with and has cut to form new shapes, leaving the back supports as is. Marks that seemed in the past to be imperfect are reconsidered in a new context. Each work is begun not with an idea of a finished piece in mind, but with an uncertainty and a reliance on the process of making. Busby’s attraction to surface and shape becomes almost instinctive. In Busby’s hands gesso, a medium for creating a surface to paint over, is meticulously sanded and polished as if being treated like a precious stone. Graphite is repeatedly rubbed and burnished into the surfaces of the works creating an almost mirror-like surface—both dark in its blackish depth and silverish in its ability to reflect light. Fluorescent orange, green, blue, and yellow colors are applied to the backs of the works creating a reflective glow and further alluding to the title of the exhibition. While seemingly formalistic at first glance, the works in Busby Electric are a personal reflection of memory, time, and place. Having lost his parents when he was young, Busby explores elements of his early life that reveal a feeling of nostalgia and contentment through the use of medium and method. Tactile experiences such as making graphite drawings on brown paper-bag book covers that inadvertently develop a patina, or sandblasting and spray-painting motors that were being rebuilt in his father’s shop inform his choice of materials and the process of their transformation. The Japanese concept of wabi-sabi and practice of kintsugi come to mind in relation to Busby’s artistic practice with his considered attention to detail, respect for craft, and understanding of the preciousness of the mundane. - Lowell Ryan Projects is pleased to present Richard Dupont's second solo show at the gallery, 7 Islands, on view from July 20th to August 17th. This exhibition features seven works on paper depicting scenes of swimmers and surfers in the ocean, each measuring approximately 60 x 42 inches, in shades of pink, blue, yellow, and grey. Installed sequentially by color in the upper level of the gallery, these works are from Dupont’s ongoing drawing practice dedicated to images in nature—from the Islands series the artist depicts scenes that are just out of view of a landmass. These drawings take the form of an imaginative exercise, once the artist approaches the paper any possible reference materials are cast aside. Whimsical in approach and immersive in scale one can almost feel the warmth of sun in the saturated pink hues or the cool water in the blue washes of color. The dash-like strokes depicting the reflection of light on the water’s surface remind the viewer of the impermanence of both the setting and the process. Captured briefly by the mind’s eye, Dupont’s method becomes both a meditation and a means of escapism. While Dupont’s practice has explored ideas related to self-portraiture and psychological states, through his recent drawing practice he inverts his subject matter. Instead of depicting his own body as a vessel or carrier of information Dupont considers the possibility of capturing a feeling, vision, or memory with the understanding that the mind is also capable of distorting one’s own perception. What matters most is the outcome—the tactile process of making and the emotion invoked through the pleasure in a connection to nature.