Press Release: Jeff Elrod

04.01.99

In The Hudson (Show)Room

Jeff Elrod

HOUSTON, TEXAS

Exhibition: April 8 ?ly 4, 1999

ArtPace, A Foundation for Contemporary Art | San Antonio is pleased to present
paintings by Houston-based artist Jeff Elrod in The Hudson (Show)Room.

Jeff Elrod's work reflects current trends in painting, in which abstraction and content
collide to examine contemporary visual culture. Derived from digital technology, Elrod's
paintings are intentionally low-tech in appearance. Elrod begins by "scribbling" on a
computer with a mouse, creating choppy, flat lines and gestures layered on bold fields of
color. Arbitrary keystrokes and commands and improvisational movements with the
mouse contribute to the accidental feel of the images. The designs are then projected onto
the canvas, and after carefully masking the gestural lines with tape, Elrod rolls several
layers of color to achieve a flat, manufactured character to the large paintings.

Balancing chaos theory and modernist aesthetics, Elrod's paintings succinctly convey
the possibilities and trappings of technology. Digital technology has become a tool to
solve problems, to condense time and to efficiently produce. It has also provided an
endless stream of options? can surf the web for hours on end without a clear
goal? the ends are often surprising and refreshing, challenging and moving. Elrod's
digital paintings restore an idea of freedom in choas, of elegance within accident, and
ultimately, of the pleasure of the virtual hand and the abstract image.

Elrod was born in 1966 in Irving, TX and currently lives and works in Houston, TX.
He holds a B.F.A. from the University of North Texas, Denton. He has been a resident
artist at the Glassel School of Art (CORE Fellowship), Houston; the Rijksakademie Van
Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam; and The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX. In 1998 he
received a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. Since the mid-1990s, he has held solo
exhibitions at Daer Gallery, Amsterdam; New Gallery, Houston; Gallery One Three
Seven, Houston; Art of this Century, Houston; as well as at Texas Gallery, Houston,
where he is represented. Elrod's paintings were included in the 1998 exhibition,
Abstract Painting, Once Removed, at the Contemporary Arts Museum in
Houston. He opens a solo show at Pat Hearn Gallery in New York in May 1999.

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