MASSIMODECARLO is delighted to present Sending, a solo exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Spencer Lewis.

“Like sending my love”, said Spencer Lewis when we asked him what he meant by the exhibition’s title. Lewis sends us a message or, rather, a feeling. Smears, caked-up textures and bursts of colour can be read or interpreted as words, parts of a message on the brink of legibility.

Pouring himself on the fuzzy skin of his jute canvases, Lewis draws lines and marks, spraying and splashing paint on a surface that absorbs everything and resists erasure. With chaotic, almost infinite layers, Lewis’s canvases conceal and simultaneously unveil a brushstroke, a gesture over the other, stories and moments culminating and accumulating on the painting’s densest parts.

Lewis’s use of cheap materials reveals an urgency in his practice and wilful attention towards mediums that do not carry the burden of an art historical heritage. Painting on unprimed jute exposes the artist’s instinctual and unruly pictorial language, exhibiting a distressing authenticity and blatant selfhood. Aggressive, bright hues blend in with the earthy tones of the jute, creating crusty patches of colour that hide and store previous signs and brushstrokes. Trapping time and stories, these matted and thick layers of paint are intermitted by empty spaces where the brown-tan jute displays its roughness and the artist’s deliberate disregard to finish.

Gallery address: Shop 03-205A & 205B & 206, Second Floor, Barrack Block, Tai Kwun, No. 10 Hollywood Road, Central