Sargent’s Daughters is pleased to announce an exhibition of three painters: Dee Ferris, Barnaby Furnas and Annie Lapin. The exhibition will open on Sunday, April 6th and continue through April 27th, 2014.

The dynamic force of painting is central to the exhibition, which draws upon painting’s history and materiality. The three artists look to a historical narrative, both palpable and subliminal, in their works, which range from the enormous to the intimate. All the paintings are abstract, but a tenuous figuration hovers at the edges. The artists meet the legacy of painting and carry forth, unburdened by convention and unafraid of challenge.

The light within Dee Ferris’ paintings radiates outwards, as if traveling great distances to reach the viewer and then disseminates- nearly leaving the picture plain and making an exit. This emotional rendering of atmosphere captures the elusive light of her native England in a similar manner to J.M.W Turner, whose depictions of the filtered English landscape cross the boundary into abstraction. Ferris’ work balances obfuscation and revelation, hinting at what remains cloaked behind her haze of subtle layers and gesture.

Barnaby Furnas is known for his heated, dynamic renderings of violent and ecstatic subjects: the American Civil War, Jonah and the Whale, Christ, and the parting of the Red Sea. The works in this exhibition, all of which are fiercely red, convey the beauty and brutality of blood-- as Lord Byron wrote: “red battle stamps his foot and nations feel the shock”. This same shock reverberates through Furnas’ canvases, which are both elegant in their restraint and wild in their exuberance. Furnas does not shy away from difficult subjects- he instead embraces, confronts and commands them as he does the material itself.

Annie Lapin’s paintings reveal a palimpsest in which traces of a hidden world peek through each layer, enticing but not elaborating what lies beneath. Dashes and darts of thicker paint dot the surface, while spray letters protrude from wide washes of a singular color. The paintings are a rumination on the act of seeing and convey a sense of nature while remaining rooted in architecture, as if the house has gone to seed and weeds sprout from the walls. A slow decay and decline merge with a sense of longing: something, somewhere is waiting to blossom.

Dee Ferris was born in Somerset, 1973 and lives and works in Brighton. Ferris has participated in group shows at Tate Britain, London; Saatchi Gallery, London; Centre d' Art Contemporain, Charamande, France and Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo. She has had solo shows at Hemma Hos Julia, Stockholm; Corvi-Mora, London and Taro Nasu, Tokyo.

Barnaby Furnas was born in Philadelphia, PA in 1973 and lives and works in New York. Selected solo exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, Fort Worth, Texas (2007), and at Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (2009). Selected group exhibitions include the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY (2011), the Ullens Center, Beijing (2010), and the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, Texas (2008). Furnas was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial, and is represented by Marianne Boesky, New York, Anthony Meier Fine Arts in San Francisco and Victoria Miro, London.

Annie Lapin was born in 1978 and lives and works in Los Angeles. Lapin is the recent recipient of the Falk Visiting Artist Award from the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, where she was the subject of a solo exhibition in 2013. Other recent solo shows include exhibitions at Josh Lilley Gallery in London, the Santa Barbara Museum of Contemporary Art in Santa Barbara, CA, and Yautepec Gallery in Mexico City. Recent group exhibitions include Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, in Overland Park, KS, and the Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA. She is represented by Honor Fraser, Los Angeles.