The Charles Riva Collection is delighted to present INTERSECTION. This exhibition brings together twelve artists from Riva’s personal collection. They encompass three generations and four different countries – Georg Baselitz, Eliza Douglas, Spencer Lewis, Paul McCarthy, Jonathan Meese, David Ostrowski, Marco Pariani, Daniel Richter, Cheyney Thompson, Josh Smith, Olivier Souffrant, and Christopher Wool. INTERSECTION presents an overview on contemporary painting – its pictorial idioms as well as its direct contemporary resonances. The twelve works meet and diverge at the crossroads of figurative and abstraction. The center point of the INTERSECTION being Christopher Wool’s post-punk gestural metaphysical abstraction and Daniel Richter’s futuristic theoretical figures. Josh Smith’s small Grim Reaper is another work that speaks directly to the central point of this exhibition. Smith’s inspiration for his iconic figure is the chess game between the knight and the reaper in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957). Two large scale paintings, Spencer Lewis’ bright, gestural, and dynamic colorful work sits in perfect harmony with David Ostrowski’s pared down minimalist single spray- painted mark. Georg Basellitz and Paul McCarthy have two powerful works on paper in the exhibition, and McCarthy also has a photograph. The influence of Baselitz and McCarthy is felt across the generations.

Charles Riva is dedicated to supporting emerging young artists. The new generation is represented by Italian Marco Pariani, who’s layered abstractions begin with a drawing until it is obliterated by layers of gesso. The final mark of the artists hand is evident his calligraphic spray-painted lines which spark the surface. Olivier Souffrant is a young Brooklyn-based Hatian/American multidisciplinary artist whose painting practice presents an amalgamation of styles and stories, both personal and historical. American artist Eliza Douglas’ colorful abstract brushstrokes convey a fantasy grounded in her personal reality. American artist Cheyney Thompson’s practice often originates from a predefined mechanical process. This method also recalls «Automatic» techniques, widely used by the Abstract Expressionists.

The driving motivation for Charles Riva is the idea of putting together works of different origins in relation and contrast to each other. This stems from his desire to break away from the generic white cube concept of an exhibition space that is typical for contemporary art galleries. The exhibition therefore is a natural choice: a cross road between graphic arts, abstraction, and figurative work, mutually enriching each other, with pieces of exceptional quality, hence the title of the exhibition INTERSECTION.