A Placid Pause

Jonathan Levine Projects is committed to new and cutting edge art. Our roots go back to 1995 when LeVine's life-long participation in punk and underground music grew into a curatorial experiment with the visual culture that surrounded him. In 2005, he opened Jonathan LeVine Gallery in the Chelsea district of New York City and had great success nurturing the careers of many celebrated artists. In 2017, the gallery relocated to Jersey City with a newfound focus on community and collaboration. The newly named Jonathan LeVine Projects aims to create engaging programs and interesting partnerships beyond the traditional gallery space. With an eye towards honoring and connecting with the history and context of Post War art, Jonathan LeVine Projects explores the terrain of the high/low and everything in between. Mixed media tends to refer to a work of visual art that combines various traditionally distinct visual art media. For example, a work on canvas that combines paint, ink, and collage could properly be called a "mixed media" work. When creating a painted or photographed work using mixed media it is important to choose the layers carefully and allow enough drying time between the layers to ensure the final work will have integrity. If many different media are used it is equally important to choose a sturdy foundation upon which the different layers are imposed. Many interesting effects can be achieved by using mixed media. Often, found objects are used in conjunction with traditional artist media, such as paints and graphite, to express a meaning in the everyday life. In this manner, many different elements of art become more flexible than with traditional artist media. Andy Kehoe was born and raised in the city of steel, Pittsburgh, PA. The artist spends his days painting away in his attic in Portland, OR. He was bred on comics from an early age, finding an escape of sorts in the over stylized violence found within. Now longing for the days of his youth, the artist remembers the endless hours he spent absorbing all the storybooks and cartoons he could get his hands on, all the while doodling away on any scrap of paper available. His paintings are rich with a childlike innocence that recall a time when magic and monsters existed and all the untold mysteries of the world still seemed possible. Shortly after graduating from high school, Kehoe explored a number of different art schools before settling in to the illustration course at Parsons School of Design in NY. After dabbling in commercial illustration for a short time, Kehoe decided it was time to focus on his personal work, and he’s never looked back since. Kehoe’s work has shown the world over including such prestigious galleries as Jonathan LeVine (New York City), Nucleus Gallery (Los Angeles), Black Maria Gallery (Los Angeles), and Copro Gallery (Santa Monica, CA), as NEW YORK, NY (April 9, 2013) — Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to present Luminous Reverie, a series of new mixed media works on panel by Pittsburgh-based artist Andy Kehoe, in what will be his third solo exhibition at the gallery. Known for human-animal hybrid figures set in forested backgrounds, Kehoe’s recent works have evolved to include a new technique of painting his distinct imagery in oil and acrylic on multiple layers of resin. Incorporating this new medium has added illusions of shadow and dimension, altering spatial relationships from background to foreground and expanding the level of depth between subjects and their surrounding environment. In this exhibition, Kehoe introduces another new aspect to his process by adding elements sculpted with polymer clay—placing antlers, trees and other details within layers of poured resin and paint. This marks the first time the artist’s work will contain three-dimensional objects submerged within the flat surface of his two-dimensional tableaus. In one piece, painted shards of broken glass resemble an erupting volcano. Other scenes portray a moon-like island suspended in the sky and a giant gnarled tree possessing a gateway to an alternate dimension. In Kehoe’s words, “I’ve always loved creating little worlds within my work. One