SHRINE is excited to present Summer Flats, a group exhibition celebrating a very simple concept: artists who work within the confines of traditionally 2-dimensional media. Summer is the perfect time for embracing a playful, relaxed mindset, and these artists, while not lacking intent or potency, all create works that embrace this open spirit. 

Working in multiple layers of pastel, Kyle Breitenbach explores what at first appear to be traditional icons and images; however, his process of applying and then carefully removing pigment on linen creates an atmospheric surface with a vibrant history of content and color. Also working in multiple layers, Marcus Jahmal and Sadie Laska use nontraditional methods of painting to create work that is completely unique and also instantly recognizable as their own. Jahmal paints on both sides of artist-prepared plexiglass to create images that seem to edge towards the mundane (a lizard on a branch, botanical leaves, a sunset with ship), but which are instantly electrified by his intuitive and sure-handed application of paint. Similarly, Laska deftly incorporates everyday objects and unexpected recycled materials such as paper cups, cardboard and work gloves into her hand cut, object-shaped paintings that are then camouflaged by layers of paint and spray-painted outlines. The resulting images hover between realism and the cartoon.

Mason Saltarrelli takes a more straightforward approach to mark making. His quiet, and usually abstract, drawings are on large sheets of collaged paper that has been carefully stained and treated. These hazy, vintage-looking backdrops are exceptionally rich and provide an extremely interesting setting for his automatic drawing style. Scott Zieher produces a slightly more straightforward form of collage work by completely limiting himself to found imagery and materials to express himself on paper. Relying on sourced images from magazines, books and postcards, Zieher has put together an incredibly cohesive body of work that resonates with an energy the original source material was not capable of expressing.

Rounding out the show are three artists who respond to the world around them in very different ways: Melissa Brown, Maria Calandra and Ellie Pyle. Melissa Brown’s latest series of paintings on aluminum are pop meditations on the complex and often banal nature of contemporary times. Her use of lottery ticket scratch-off paint, airbrushed acrylic and oil creates hyper-stylized renderings of car interiors, computer screens, landscapes and icons of pop culture. Coming from a very different point, Maria Calandra uses graphite to render collectors’ homes, studios and other interior spaces. Departing slightly from her well known series, Pencil in the Studio, where she visits artists’ studios to document their workspace and in process pieces, this group of work revolves around book collections and collectors’ living spaces. Also taking from her direct line of sight, Ellie Pyle appropriates imagery from the world around her, primarily signs and symbols that she crosses paths with daily here in NYC- a shopping bag emblem, MTA signage, the Wise Potato Chip truck, app icons from her telephone. Pyle then dramatically alters the context of the originating image through cropping the initial forms and adding a rugged texture to the surface of her paintings with multiple layers of glitter, which further removes the her work from its starting point.

Shrine is located in New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood just two blocks from the East Broadway F Train stop.