Nina Johnson will present Cleanliness is next to godliness, a solo exhibition by Rhys Gaetano featuring his recent encaustic works that employ sculptural techniques in painterly compositions. Drawing inspiration from the everyday, Gaetano explores the beauty in the commonplace. Often featuring cleaning product brands like Clorox, Lysol, Scotch Brite, or Simply Green, these works use familiar symbols of cleanliness or sterility and upend their associations through imperfect, textured, and nuanced forms, creating a new lens and lexicon through which to reimagine their colors, shapes, and context.

Through this selection of abstract compositions, which at times render the object unrecognizable from its referent, emerges a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the domestic and the ordinary. When asked about the theme of the exhibition, Gaetano replied, “Cleanliness is next to godliness”. But the adage belies the messiness of the process, which he describes as laborious and time consuming. His studio is littered with “a minefield of industrial-size spaghetti pots” for mixing wax and color.

For each piece, he outlines the objects in steel forms as a sort of sculptural framework for the composition. It took Gaetano nearly five years to learn this methodology, which he likens to the process of making stained glass. Mixing and pouring the wax is unruly and unpredictable—this lack of control and forfeiting to the process lends a certain playfulness to the resultant works, a trait that has been consistent in Gaetano’s artistic practice throughout his career.

Gaetano is one of the founders of the Bruce High Quality Foundation, a collective formed by the artist and fellow Cooper Union and Parsons School of Design graduates in 2001, which champions unconventionality and challenges established art world norms. Gaetano’s work is characterized by an exploratory and curious spirit, which he attributes to his early childhood and upbringing—from a Manhattan loft to the rich natural landscapes of North Carolina and upstate New York. Gaetano’s parents encouraged and fostered an approach to learning and looking that went against the grain.

In Cleanliness is next to godliness, these foundational elements emerge—a sense of humor without flippancy and a rigor in process without proclivity for control. These works show what can be achieved through careful looking: humble altars for the ordinary, at once plain and exultant.

Rhys Gaetano (b. 1983, New York) received a BFA from the Cooper Union in New York City. He is a founder of the Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQF). Formed by Gaetano and fellow Cooper Union and Parsons School of Design graduates in 2001, the collective was “created to foster an alternative to everything” and pokes fun at the conventions of art through a vast and indiscriminate output including installation, video, painting, sculpture, and performance. From 2009 to 2017, the collective ran the Bruce High Quality Foundation University, a free-form school that questioned the ecosystem of art, especially as it contended with fame and formal art education models. Over its lifespan, the school hosted over 100,000 students. A wide-reaching artist-participant exhibition, the Brucennial, ran from 2008 until 2014. BHQF’s work has been presented in esteemed galleries and art institutions worldwide, including the Brooklyn Museum; the Whitney Biennial, New York; and the Biennale de Lyon. Rhys Gaetano’s solo work appears in the permanent collections of Craig Robins, Thomas and Doris Ammann, Julian Schnabel, and in various private collections across the United States. Gaetano’s eclecticism is due in great part to his upbringing. Homeschooled by his mother and influenced by his artist father, he spent his early years in a Manhattan loft, then later moved to New Jersey; he spent formative time in the more rural areas of Asheville, North Carolina, and upstate New York. Gaetano lives and works in Brooklyn and upstate New York.