Marcel Sitcoske Gallery is proud to present an exhibition of new paintings by New York based artist Julian Lethbridge. This is the first time his work has been shown in the Bay Area.

For over twenty years, Julian Lethbridge has been working within an abstract framework to create continually engaging and challenging work. His paintings affirm the potency and relevance of abstract painting, at a time when many artists and critics seem too quick to dismiss it. His quietly complex works give credence to the belief that there is still much to be gleaned from subtle explorations of color, texture, line, and form.

With this exhibition, Lethbridge will be showing canvases that are filled with overall arrangements of geometric shapes, curves and lines. His compositions borrow from natural forms such as cobwebs or broken glass, yet also share a connection to the modernist grid. His heavily worked surfaces highlight a tension between flatness and depth; the shallow space created by the layering of forms is playfully thwarted by the way these forms are etched into the paint itself. Although intense, Lethbridge’s palette is usually limited to one or two colors per painting. As in all of Lethbridge’s works in the show, there is a highly composed interplay between the individual forms that make up the work and the overall pattern. In the delicate combination of elements in his paintings, Lethbridge has managed to draw from sources such as abstract expressionism and minimalism to create a new abstraction, full of possibility. Balanced and elegant, restrained yet boundless, “Lethbridge’s seemingly limited works manage to intimate the infinite.”*

In addition to exhibiting his paintings internationally, Julian Lethbridge
also publishes his prints at ULAE, one of the most highly respected print
houses in the country. He is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art at
Columbia University in New York.

*Jeffrey Wright, “Galleries,” Art and Antiques, September 1992:82.