Gabriel Hartley

Gabriel Hartley’s work combines optical effects and iconic markings on highly textured surfaces. His work summons early Modernism’s play with abstraction and perspective. With bold linear brushstrokes and organic, elemental shapes, Hartley’s forms play with space and movement. His painterly effects – generated through a mix of gloss and matte paint – convey both a flatness and a depth that produce a palpable sense of tension. The dusty quality of Hartley’s impasto surfaces recall the paintings of School of Paris artist Jean Fautrier. Hartley fuses seemingly opposing elements: the painterly and the photographic, flatness and depth, and two and three dimensionality. He simultaneously constructs and excavates – building subjects and unraveling them – to create figures at once formative and timeworn.