McKenzie Fine Art: James Lecce Exhibition 2024

55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467


	James Lecce April 18 - May 24, 2024
	James Lecce began this new body of work as an expansion of his signature painting technique of poured and pooled layers of acrylic polymer emulsion on canvas. He has introduced linear elements to the work to enhance and elevate a sense of movement, speed, and connote various stages of transformation and evolution. In several works, the lines dominate the composition, while in others they serve to articulate larger elements. Throughout, Lecce creates rich and vivid paintings with sumptuous, glossy surfaces in which translucent veils of color contrast with irregular passages of opaque paint to form flowing, organic shapes. He continues his use of metallic and iridescent paints that serve as structural frameworks as well as visually seductive accents. Lecce has been exploring themes of metamorphosis in these recent paintings. The series began with his Revelation paintings, dominated by rapid and steady linear pours. These works suggest networks of information and energetic circuitries captured in a generative moment, flowing and undulating across the picture plane, unconfined by the edges. From these, the Wellspring, Expansion, and Integrator series were born, with the introduction of translucent biomorphic shapes seemingly in a state of becoming, generated by the sheer velocity of the linear components that actively surround and intertwine them. In the Formation paintings, quiescent nesting cellular shapes engage with more dynamic linear elements, suggesting a period of incubation. The Emergence paintings represent the final stage of metamorphosis. The cellular shapes have enlarged into gliding sheets of translucent veils, enhanced by ribbons of color and metallic strands. Linear elements wisp across the picture plane suggesting flight, freedom, force, and movement. The result is a cohesive series of paintings exploring multiples stages of flux and transformation. Lecce has been exhibiting his work nationally in museums and galleries for nearly 30 years; he holds degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and Brooklyn’s Pratt Institute.