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Howard Sherman’s work is frank, raw, and bold. The artist knows how to be many things at the same time. His art overlaps multiple languages. It simultaneously speaks several voices: it is as impactful and energetic as a mural; it raises questions like a collage; it makes the observer’s eye run over shapes, lines, and textural traces of color, as in front of a painting of Abstract Expressionism. Sherman’s works are a mix of directness and a sense of humor. The audience can perceive them loud and clear at first glance and, at the same time, deconstruct them little by little, lingering on the different materials. It is, therefore, a precious opportunity for the public to see Sherman’s recent works at the William when the sky told humans how to live, 2020 acrylic, canvas, oil and marker on canvas 100 x 60 x 2 in

Campbell Gallery in Forth Worth (Texas). This is a special debut exhibition for the artist for the first time at the Texas Gallery. The Houston-based artist has, in fact, a solid career behind him and more than sixty national and international exhibitions to his credit. He has gained praise from specialized art critics, which defined him as “one of the most pioneering contemporary painters on the Texas art scene”. In 2023, Sherman will also have a major monograph entirely dedicated to his practice, with relevant critical contributions.

However, the solo show What it Feels Like Inside the Sun is the first exhibition of the visual artist at William Campbell Gallery in Forth Worth. Inaugurating this happy partnership is a selection of 10 works, expertly realized with different techniques: recent large-scale paintings created with mixed media on canvas, other works on paper, and wall assemblage. The exhibition at WGC, hosted in June and July 2023, is bound to amaze audiences with the physicality of Sherman’s works. The ability to overlap, to move between opposite poles, placing them at a powerful meeting point is the artist’s stylistic hallmark.

His works balance figuration and abstraction, elements drawn from recognizable reality and other strongly abstract.

Sherman knows how to orchestrate: he draws on more traditional painting techniques and more contemporary ones, such as collage and assemblage, mixing different styles from art history. This is no small thing nor a purely aesthetic choice: his ability to mix rather than separate, to use both the high visual languages of abstract art and the more popular ones of cartooning or street art denotes his playful spirit. It is an open attitude to mixing that distinguishes all of his artwork. Sherman can mix the gestural energy of mark-making and abstract expressionism, visible in his dense black strokes and colored acrylic brushstrokes, with the compositional logic users clustering near the checkpoint, 2022 acrylic, canvas, spray paint and marker 70 x 60 x 2 in of collage. The result is an explosive melting pot of forms and moods. Each gesture is a compromise between instinctive gesture and formal organization. Howard Sherman’s works are striking precisely because they seem driven by two impulses: one frenetic, and energetic, the other of visual balance. The final compositional solutions are measured and powerful. As the gallery representing him states, we are in the presence of “ultracontemporary abstract expressionism”.

The ultimate in modern chill.

The walls of the William Campbell Gallery at the hands of Sherman are transformed as if hosting a large-scale mural. One is struck by his acrylic paintings on canvas, with paint strokes drawn with explosive, aggressive energy; but also, by his smaller works on paper, which exploit different materials in more intuitive ways. Sherman loudly displays a visual repertoire that draws on his experience in cartooning: marked lines, bright colors, and exaggerated, charged shapes. In his works, there are also distinctive street art tools, such as markers and spray paint. The overall effect is wild and subtly comic, a mixture of Jackson Pollock-like Abstract Expressionism and Jean-Michel Basquiat’s naive Graffiti art.

// concrete character anchoring the plot, 2023 acrylic, marker and spray paint on canvas 80 x 70 x 2 in.

The figurative lexicon is also playful and expressive, with a strong chromatic impact. The word lexicon is not accidental: Sherman’s art is powerful not only because of the images but because of the words associated with them. The artist’s titles are long, intricate, and imaginative, sounding like excerpts from poems or punch lines from a playful joke. Through the titles, abstract images acquire new and surreal stories. This is how circular, angular shapes in Teethmarks as Souvenirs seem to refer to an image of a gaping mouth with sharp teeth; or the bursting energy of the entire exhibition echoes the explosion of heat that one could “feel inside the sun.”

Howard Sherman’s debut at the William Campbell Gallery is, therefore, a chance to get up close and personal with the layered and powerful language of this Austin (TX) native but internationally recognized artist. It is an opportunity to view a portion of the body of work of this prolific artist acclaimed by collectors, whose mixed media paintings are currently housed in several muse- um permanent collections, including the Art Museum of Southeast Texas, Art Museum of South Texas, and the George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. Sherman’s works invite visitors to scratch behind the surface, to discover the different layers that compose the canvas. The discovery is crystal clear: the substance of Sherman’s art is alive, active, and ready to release energy. Like the hot, central core of the star Sun.

// williamcampbellcontemporaryart.com

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