Roberts Projects is pleased to present Schwarzweiß, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Lenz Geerk, marking the artist’s fifth solo presentation with the gallery. Using the German word for “black-and-white,” the monochromatic works in Schwarzweiß straddle the line between drawing and painting, allowing the artist to probe the emotional and psychological spaces of anxiety, uncertainty and disconnection. Geerk’s oeuvre is renowned for its use of a figurative language that hearkens back to early Modernism as a means for exploring the strangeness and alienation of contemporary life while also attending to moments of hope and possibility. His paintings regularly depict solitary figures absorbed in contemplation, or groups of people where the possibility of connection has been replaced by the certainty of isolation. His figures are archetypal rather than specific; he sets them within spaces both descriptively vague and poetically alive. The compositional restraint of the scenes Geerk constructs and the placid, dreamlike manner in which he paints is often at odds with the inner turmoil his figures seem to be experiencing. By eschewing obvious references within the works to a specific historical period, Geerk allows them to assume a timeless and universal quality, one that prompts viewers to reflect on details in their own lives without being imaginatively confined by them. Though the existential and thematic focus in Schwarzweiß is consistent with previous bodies of work, the form of expression is decidedly new, as these works are rendered entirely in black and white. For Geerk, the simplification of his palette into a range of monochromatic values is a way of expressing the increasing polarization of society and the absence of nuance, complexity and uncertainty as a result. His figures continue to express these states and qualities, as do the scenes of landscapes, still-lifes and interiors where figures are conspicuously absent. Even when the emphasis is on the inanimate or non-human, Geerk still places viewers in a precarious situation where, though certainty of meaning may be unattainable, the experiences of levity and joy are not. Geerk’s investigation of the vast space between seemingly rigid positions takes place not only on a metaphoric level, but on a formal one as well. Although the spectrum of color has been narrowed in these works, they nonetheless contain a wide range of tonal variation and pictorial subtlety which belie any notion that they are truly—and only—black and white. Working in this evasive space where drawing meets painting is just another example of Geerk’s brilliance in using his materials and creative process to express a state of flux and indeterminacy. In Schwarzweiß, works that might have previously been understood as studies or preparations are embraced as both provisional and complete. _____ Roberts Projects is pleased to present Finding Figures, an exhibition of new works on paper by Daniel Crews-Chubb, the artist’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Building on his previous exploration of the figure's formal and philosophical possibilities, Crews-Chubb’s new works take an increasingly abstract direction, aiming to uncover the timeless and universal rather than the contemporary and specific. For nearly ten years Crews-Chubb has centered the figure in his work, using it as a flexible motif that blends ancient references to Aztec deities and Hindu gods with more recent art historical influences, including Cubism, Abstract Expressionism and the CoBrA movement. His figures, whether solitary or in groups, are intentionally devoid of defining features that might tie them to specific races, genders or cultural identities. By allowing them to be read as archetypes rather than embodiments of specific historical periods, Crews-Chubb invites viewers to consider the body in a more fundamental and primary sense—as a vessel of energy rather than a container for subjectivity. Though Finding Figures marks the first time that Crews-Chubb will solely exhibit works on paper, he has retained the materially dense, compositionally frenetic and formally complex qualities that are typical of his works on canvas and which are due in large part to the manner in which he paints, a process he likens to sculpture. Beginning with his substrates on the floor, Crews-Chubb then covers them with a wide array of materials, including acrylics, oil pastels, charcoal, sand and inks, while seldom using brushes for the application or refinement of his compositions. Once the rough outline of a silhouette or compositional structure has emerged he moves each work onto the wall and continues to both add and remove material as he searches for the right balance of figure and ground, shape and atmosphere. Like his choice of materials, Crews-Chubb’s palettes are varied and expansive and they express his interest in pairing colors and materials evoking the organic and natural with those that seem artificial, industrial and irrefutably new. The drive towards greater degrees of abstraction in these works is reflective of Crews-Chubb’s ongoing interest in pareidolia, the psychological and perceptual phenomenon whereby humans perceive order, patterns or structure in otherwise random and diffuse stimuli, as when a face or object is seen amidst fleeting cloud formations. This deeply human and universal drive to convert the abstract into the concrete takes on a formal dimension in Crews-Chubb’s works, in which figures are somewhat discernible and seemingly on the cusp of dissolving into the larger world of their compositions. The internal split between order and its absence is never resolved in these works. Instead, both possibilities exist simultaneously and in productive tension with one another. The exhibitions will open to the public on January 25, 2025. However, due to current circumstances, there will not be an opening reception.