Marrow Gallery is pleased to present “Flags: Nido,” new works from Kent State Professor, Shawn Powell. In his first solo exhibition with the gallery, Powell will present small-scale reductive abstract paintings on custom-made flag-shaped canvases. The works were created while in residence in Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy.

Nido, the Italian word for nest, in this context Powell’s studio; where he has created a body of work that explores, references, and expands upon the visual language created by artists and movements that explore abstract painting through color, symbolism and ideation. Powell’s use of nautical flags and the visual cues that represent meaning parallel the formal semantics of abstraction; both signifiers of coded ways of communicating. Regarding a symbolic exchange of information, these two similar ways of transmitting messages offer both a surface-level exchange and a hidden coded meaning that requires knowledge of the conceptual nature of the images.

Shawn Powell lives and works in Kent, Ohio. He has presented solo exhibitions at 106 Green, Brooklyn, NY; Chapter, New York, NY; Abattoir Gallery, Cleveland, OH; and in Tennis Elbow at The Journal Gallery, New York, NY. His work has been in numerous group exhibitions at venues such as Marrow Gallery, San Francisco, CA; The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; Nada Miami, Nada New York. He has been featured in print or online in Vanity Fair, Brooklyn Magazine, Hyperallergic, Artmaze Mag, Juxtapoz Magazine, New American Paintings, as well as in Secret of the Friendly Woods with the Wassaic Project.

He was awarded the 2021 and 2023 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award Grants. Powell has participated in the Alfred/Düsseldorf Residency in Düsseldorf, Germany, and the Poor Farm artist residency at the International Center for the Arts in Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy. His work is included in the Akron Art Museum permanent collection, Fidelity Art Collection, and the Cleveland Clinic Collection. Powell received his BFA in Painting and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA in Painting from Hunter College.