Lauda bids us to enter an indeterminate place, despite everything. He does so not in modernism’s domineering way or in a melancholic, backward-looking manner, but with remarkable gentleness through an intimate, experiential relationship with time, gestures, and bodies, carefully avoiding to grasp any one thing and always ensuring a certain buoyancy. - Ji-Yoon Han

Romer Young Gallery is pleased to announce its second solo exhibition with Montreal artist Jean-Francois Lauda. Lauda will present four large scale works that are emblematic of his practice. There will be an opening reception on Friday, May 10th, from 6 to 9pm.

“Lauda’s intelligence is liquid, material, sensual, and metaphysical, all at once” (Ara Osterweil). Through an intuitive, approach and a fugitive quality of marks, Lauda’s work embraces the unexpected and seeks to understand the residual traces of the image. Whether through erased and fleeting gestures, juxtaposed geometric bands and fragmented or concealed elements, his compositions reveal a constant desire to shift the susceptible elements of chance into a unique aesthetic. Paint application shifts from scraping to stamping, from spraying to rubbing, to lightly brushing the paint on the canvas. Large swaths of paint are interrupted, unpredictably, by the occasional small dot of colour. Lauda encourages the viewer to take a nuanced approach to the indeterminate and his exhibition of four beautiful paintings allows for the ineffable experience of abstraction at its best.

Jean-François Lauda is a Canadian born artist currently working in Montreal. Lauda has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in Canada and the United States. Notable solo and two-person exhibitions include; Darling Foundry, Montreal; Angell Gallery, Toronto; Guido Molinari Foundation, Montreal; Galerie Antoine Ertaskiran; VIE D’ANGE, Montreal; Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco; Battat Contemporary, Montreal. Lauda was also part of the group exhibition Du Côté de chez Soon, at galerie René Blouin, in Montreal. His works are included in both private and public collections.