Lucas Moran at Buia

Lucas Moran Fishing Net 2007 oil and spray paint on canvas 24" x 30"

Lucas Moran Summer Jam 2007 oil, spray paint and galkyd on canvas 62" x 84"

Lucas Moran Untitled 2007 oil, spray paint and galkyd on canvas 18" x 24"

Because of a lot of distractions, only some related to visits to galleries, I'm way behind on a lot of my self-assigned postings, and I've wanted to do at least a quick post about Lucas Moran's show at Buia, "From Here On Out", for several weeks now. The artist's small to medium-sized canvases exhibit a mix of tangled shapes and extravagant colors worked, and sometimes alarmingly distressed, in oil and spray paint, here and there including galkyd, and occasionally revealing traces of powdered sandstone.

These paintings broadcast equal elements of chaos and order and remain fundamentally non-pictorial even if they don't leave our imagination to wander totally unattended: Many include both subtle and conspicuous graffiti and pop art components - sometimes both - welcome interlopers which focus Moran's abstraction, dragging us into an exotic, alien world whose gritty seductiveness is intensified by the artist's ability to manipulate the mixed media with such wicked skill.

Lucas Moran Untitled 2007 oil, spray paint, sandstone and galkyd on canvas 62" x 50" [detail]

[full image]

More good stuff on Moran from Tom Moody.

[thumbnail image from the gallery]