JIMI GLEASON : SILVERING

Film by Eric Minh Swenson. Music by David Tagg.

Jimi Gleason's Silver and Black painting series emphasize seductive surfaces, nontraditional materials and the luminescent use of silver deposit to catalyze intimate reflection on the mechanics of perception.

Gleason's new collection is consistent with the iridescent paintings he's developed over the last decade but it's a radical departure in execution. Using a silver-deposit surface coat, he creates paintings that are ethereal and glassy, sheets of solid vapor that respond to the play of light and react to their environment.

The silver-deposit paintings began in 2008 as a mutation of Gleason's soft, glowing iridescent works. They're easily understandable as paintings, though it's difficult to imagine how they were created. They're enigmatic, betraying no evidence of traditional method--the application of paint on canvas. The viewer's first impression is that Gleason has found a way to freeze the immaterial. From there, the silver surfaces, which are highly reactive to light effects and different viewing positions, invite involvement and suggest the infinitely broad experiential possibilities of art.

Born in Newport Beach, Calif., Gleason received his BA from UC Berkeley in 1985. He studied printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute before relocating to New York City, where he worked as a photo assistant and photo technician. Returning to California,
Gleason was employed in the studio of Ed Moses for five years. Combining the disparate technical and compositional skills developed during his exposure to printmaking, photography and mixed-media painting, Gleason is now the subject of considerable curatorial and critical applause. His work is exhibited in significant public institutions, including the Armand Hammer Museum, the Long Beach Museum of Art, the Seattle Art Museum, the Tucson Museum of Art and the Frederick Weisman Art Museum. The artist's paintings are actively collected by a growing number of major public and private collections around the world.

For more info on Eric Minh Swenson or project inquiries visit his website: thuvanarts.com
ART FILM SERIES: thuvanarts.com/take1