The Mayor's Gallery presents "Bruce Horan NAVIGATION a collection of post abstraction reactive paintings depicting our consta

The Mayor’s Gallery presents

Bruce Horan, NAVIGATION a collection of post abstraction reactive paintings depicting our constantly changing environment.

September 6 – November 6, 2017

Opening reception: Thursday, September 7 from 5:30 -7:30pm

10th floor Government Center, 888 Washington Blvd. Stamford, CT

contact: 203 858 3082

Hours: weekdays from 9am – 4pm

Handicap accessible and on site parking

Bruce’s work explores the human experience within the constructed world that surrounds us. As we move about our daily lives, we constantly encounter the shapes, colors and energy around us. Objects quickly shift in and out of focus as our attention changes from one object to another. Our concentration continuously darts around as we navigate throughout our surroundings, allowing our focus to become lucid while all else dissipates into abstraction.

As we journey through our surroundings, we define the people we meet, the streets we walk through, the buildings that encroach and the objects that we encounter along our path through the culmination of our own definitions, memories, interactions and understandings. Often we notice the little things while the larger scene fades beyond our gaze. Depending on mood, weather, location and unexpected confrontations, our experience can drastically change from one moment to the next. Our memories, definitions, awareness and intelligence all effect our perception of our environment.

The work exhibited in this show provides snapshots of experiences as one navigates through the busy city streets, where a multitude of different experiences can occur simultaneously or in quick succession depending on focus and mood.

Bruce’s paintings find the place between impressionism and abstract expressionism, culminating in a contemporary post-abstraction that allows the viewer to engage within the environment presented. Just as the person walking through the streets is able to change focus through quick glances and direct focus, the viewer is also able to enter the scene where they are free to explore and focus upon the varying components of the painting. Where we focus, all else abstracts.

Through expressive gesture, reactive painting and a liberal use of color and mark-making, Bruce’s painting’s remind us that our environment is always in motion and built upon energy and color. Using both oil and acrylic paint while also incorporating drawing tools such as lead pencil and oil pastel, the work builds upon itself, allowing abstracted layers to show through, adjacent to flat swatches of color and light washes of paint. The figures are often left undefined, while other times include the scribblings of our own descriptions and definitions that we may instantaneously project upon the figures around us, built upon our own understandings and experiences.

Bruce Horan is a painter and printmaker and received his MFA from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 2010. He works out of his studio in Norwalk, CT and recently served as the President of the Board of Directors for the Rowayton Arts Center.