BLANK SPACE is pleased to present the three person group exhibition, Spectral Materiality, consisting of works by Elyce Abrams, Jonny Detiger, and Seunghwui Koo. The exhibition will open on Thursday June 6th, with an opening reception from 5 – 8pm, and will close on Sunday July 21st.

This exhibition seeks to showcase the ways in which these three artists, while all stylistically different, hold at their core a similarity that expresses itself through their choice to forego mechanistic production in favor of a more human and personal approach. The exhibition title, Spectral Materiality, not only relates to the concepts of form and color present across all of the pieces shown, but also to the artists material connection to their work and their processes that do not strive for repetitive perfection. All of the work presented in this exhibition maintains a human edge and a physicality that exhibits both the artists’ command of their media and their unique points of view.

Elyce Abrams uses personal experience and history to inform her colorful abstract paintings. Working with both square and shaped panel, Abrams expresses a creative freedom through a deeply personal conceptual syntax. Using acrylic and acrylic spray paint, Abrams weaves together fluid and rigid forms, light and shadow, and a multiplicity of colors to produce a varied body of visually engaging work that always subverts expectation and draws the viewer into an intimate distance.

Dutch born, New York based artist Jonny Detiger takes the 1960’s and 70’s as the inspiration for his colorful and detailed drawings and paintings. Using acrylic, marker, ink, and watercolor, Detiger eschews nostalgia in favor of a thematic translation of an era into a present and instantly recognizable visual style. In his latest work, Detiger pulls bold typographic elements from the covers of his disco record collection into a series of ink and watercolor works which can be installed in a multiplicity of ways. Also shown in this exhibition are two larger canvas works that maintain the visual style of the disco series while incorporating elements of his psychedelic influences.

Finally, Seunghwui Koo creates her three-dimensional color fields by mounting individually handcrafted small ceramic pigs to panel. Each work contains hundreds or thousands of pigs that from a distance blend into one another to look like thickly applied oil paint. However, when viewed closely, the details of the work open up and each of the components is shown, raising questions of individuality in the contemporary urban landscape. Koo began working with the image of pigs after she was confronted by their radically different connotations in Eastern and Western culture while navigating the transition from Korea to New York. The pigs have become representative of those she sees in her daily life working for material wealth while forgoing other elements of their wellbeing.

Born in South Africa, Elyce Abrams received her BFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and her MFA from the University of the Arts: Philadelphia in 2004, and was then awarded an Artist's Grant to the Vermont Studio Center in 2005. Currently living and working in Pennsylvania, she has shown frequently in its city galleries in both solo and group exhibitions, as well as from New York City to Delaware to Ohio since 1999.

A self-taught artist, Jonny Detiger went to school in Holland and Switzerland before studying business and economics at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the London School of Economics. His art and furniture design has been shown and collected widely in galleries across the United States and Europe. He is now based in New York with his family and works out of his Chinatown Studio. Koo Seunghwui has shown her sculptural works in a number of exhibitions including Monmouth Museum, NJ, Belskie Museum of Art & Science, NJ, Newark Museum, NJ, Azarian McCullough Art Gallery, St. Thomas Aquinas College, Sparkill, NY and Main Line Art Center, PA, among others. She is one of the artists in the Chashama organization in NYC. Koo currently lives and works in New Jersey and New York.