Chelsea, New York: 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel is pleased to announce Gray Matters, an exhibition of new paintings by Brian Cirmo. This is the artist’s first exhibition with the gallery and his first New York solo exhibition. Like a novelist working in paint, Brian Cirmo invites the viewer to witness his characters’ moments of tenderness and turmoil. Reading books or looking at photographs, or sitting with eyes closed, perhaps thinking or dreaming, the people in his interiors can be miles apart emotionally, but we still sense their need to be near each other.

These large-scale paintings envelop the viewer in the visceral worlds Cirmo creates, while smaller scale portraits in the exhibition, set in snowy landscapes or on moon-lit beaches, offer moments of reflection. In Gray Matters, the color gray figures in many of the works, even those ablaze with luminous color, but Cirmo also asks viewers to think about the gray areas that we navigate in our relationships or in solitude.

Brian Cirmo (b. 1977, Utica, NY) received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University at Albany, and his work has been exhibited in Boston, Sonoma, New Orleans, and Washington DC. His residencies include the Elizabeth Murray Artist Residency, Granville, NY; and Salem Art Works Residency, Salem, NY. Cirmo lives and works in Albany, NY, and is Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at SUNY Onondaga, Syracuse, NY.