LOYAL Gallery’s new exhibition is entitled “Concrete States Of Animation”, and brings together the works of four artists from two cities, New York and Los Angeles, and who all work in multiple dimensions. New York-based artist Gina Beavers works with images from the world of phone communications, taking images from social media and transforming them into paintings, with all the emotional strangeness that goes with that process. Justin Adian works with sculpture and painting, ester foam covered with boldly coloured canvas which allows for the interaction of colour and form.

Tarik Garrett works with objects that have cultural resonance, such as hoodies, a symbol of defiance and memorial after the shooting dead of black teenager Trayvon Martin, setting them in suspended animation as art objects. Chris Johanson creates bright, vivid starburst imagery, that almost explodes off the canvas. He says: “I try to say complicated things in a simple way — death, existential thought processes and anxiety. And I try to decompress that, move that away and bring in more peaceful thoughts. The repetitive quality creates serotonin in my brain. It’s like a peaceful, meditative ritual. It’s something I’ve been doing since I was a little kid”.

The exhibition opens at LOYAL on March 17 and is on display until April 14.

LOYAL, Kammakargatan 68

Photo: Chris Johanson, Peaceful Intentions Painting Number 1, 2018, Acrylic on panel