Underdonk

press release

Warm Form

New Paintings by Beverly Acha

February 16 – March 25, 2018

Opening reception: Friday, February 16, 6-9 pm
Artist Walkthrough: Sunday, February 18, 4pm

Underdonk is pleased to present Warm Form, an exhibition of new paintings by Beverly Acha. In her first New York solo exhibition, Acha introduces us to a language of abstraction that explores  structures of space and perception. Responding to shifts in her physical environment and landscape, Acha uses light and color to capture the ways in which place changes how we see and move through space.

In her paintings, Acha pulls from the systems that shape space and reality, from the forces that propel the earth’s spin and revolution around the sun, to dark matter’s role in the universe, and then back down to the architecture of our built environment, words, numbers, atoms, energy transferred in waves and particles. Each of these are associated with various types of formal abstractions: lines, grids, concentric circles, etc. In using these visual structures, Acha creates pictorial spaces that are at once shallow and infinite. Grids measure intervals, create rhythm across the surface, mark time. Gradations of color, intensity, and tone both open and collapse space, pull us in and out. To view Acha’s paintings is to access how they were made: we move through, within, and across, following their vibrations, wobbles, and breaks. Subtle asymmetries give us multiple points of entry. Inconsistencies and irregularities in the structure become tactile, haptic, and physical experiences of subjectivity. By engaging in questions of existence, experience, reality, and structures of space, time, and causality, her paintings give physicality to the intangible.

Beverly Acha (b. Miami, FL) holds an MFA from Yale University in Painting and Printmaking and a BA in Studio Art and American Studies from Williams College. Recent exhibitions include Mutualities, a solo show at the Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, NM, Noonlight at Blackburn 20|20 Gallery, UPROOT! at Smack Mellon, No Regrets at LeRoy Neiman Gallery, and Museum Starter Kit at El Museo del Barrio. Acha is the recipient of awards and residencies including a Lighthouse Works Fellowship, Wassaic Project Residency and Education Fellowship, Roswell Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, and Peyser Prize in Painting. She was interviewed for Maake Magazine Issue 4 (2017) and currently teaches painting and drawing at University of California at Davis. www.beverlyacha.com

Acha currently has a series of monotypes, “Vibrations and Waveforms,” on view in Noonlight curated by Kenny Rivero at the Blackburn 20|20 Gallery. 323 West 39th Street, 5th Floor, NYC 10018. On view January 18 to February 25, 2018, Tues. to Sun., 10am – 6pm.