Ochi Projects is pleased to present The Shape of Content, an exhibition of works by Thomas Linder, Erica Mahinay and Andrea Welton. The exhibition is on view from June 15 – July 13 with an opening reception Saturday, June 15 from 7-10pm.

Ben Shahn surmised in his book, The Shape of Content, that “Form is formulation—the turning of content into a material entity, rendering a content accessible to others, giving it permanence…Form is the very shape of content.” This exhibition focuses on three artists who engage form through abstraction. Distilling content into an impression, each uses a distinct selection of materials as they seek to communicate ideas, experiences, or memories.

Thomas Linder’s works are composed of fiberglass sheets and layers of translucent resin. The layers are poured until the top surface has come to be defined by all the colors below and is further activated by reflecting and absorbing light. The opticality of these works creates a space to look into as much as onto, but Linder is not interested in pure illusionism. Rather he blends an interest in craftsmanship with memories of his parents’ Midwestern greenhouse and his experiences walking along the Los Angeles River. Erica Mahinay’s work is rooted in philosophy and psychology and it focuses on how the relationship between language and perception influences meaning. Her paintings are often rendered in soft, suggestively feminine hues, with semitransparent and opaque materials seamed together. The moments of transparency reveal the painting’s stretcher bars, a typically concealed support system, indicating the painting, like language, is at once stable, and also a vulnerable construction. Energetically fraught hand prints smeared over the surface in translucent medium feel at once rebellious and celebratory. Other interventions, such as finger-sized holes sewn into the image offer the sense that these varied surfaces, like all experiences, are constructed; composed of contradictions and choices they serve as embodied experiences. Andrea Welton creates paintings, as she says, “in response to the lived experience of the body in nature.” WJT Mitchell wrote that “landscape is not a genre of art but a medium” and for Welton this is a literal statement as she incorporates actual elements of earth (tree bark, quartz, feldspar) into her paintings. She gathers her materials and mixes, pours and layers them into the surfaces of each work. Welton defies the traditional conception of landscape painting; landscape becomes medium and memory becomes content.

Thomas Linder (b. 1986, Saint Paul, MN) currently works in Los Angeles, California. Linder received his BFA in Sculpture and Community Arts from Kansas City Art Institute in 2008, and his MFA in Sculpture from Bowling Green State University in 2011. Linder’s work has been exhibited at Ibid Gallery, Los Angeles, Linder is also co-founder of the Los Angeles artist-run gallery, BBQLA.

Erica Mahinay (b. 1986, Santa Fe, NM) lives in Los Angeles. Her most recent solo exhibitions include Contingent at T293, Rome and Sun Seekers at Euclid, Santa Monica, CA. She will have her second solo exhibition at Lyles & King in September 2019. Previous exhibitions also include Thin Skins, Infinity Pools and Sand Slumps at Fused Space/Jessica Silverman, San Francisco (solo); Dead Eden at Lyles & King, New York; Miranda at Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; and The Go Between: A Selection of Emerging International Artists from the Ernesto Esposito Collection at Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples. Mahinay is represented by Lyles & King, New York and T293, Rome.

Andrea Welton, (b. 1988), is a painter from Half Moon Bay, CA currently residing in Orange County, CA. She is a 2019 UC Irvine MFA candidate and received her BFA from Art Center College of Design. She has been a participant of Picture Berlin, Salmon Creek Farm, and PLAYA Summer Lake residency. Her work has been shown at galleries such as Meinblau Projektraum, Berlin, Irvine Fine Arts Center, CSULA Fine Arts Gallery, and the UAG Gallery, Irvine.