Jason Rohlf and Shane McAdams’ New Paintings Featured in CHROMA EXHIBITION through April 13th

Jason Rohlf

Jason Rohlf continues to document visual sensibilities in his multifaceted paintings. Vibrant and beautifully textured, his paintings are an exploration of surface, texture, and color. Rohlf employs elements of collage and drawings and embeds them in thick layers of varnish to obscure the lines and shapes underneath. The results are visual reminders or clues telling how important certain influences have been, including city streets, digital media, and maps.

Originally from Milwaukee, Rohlf studied at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and moved to Brooklyn in 1999. He has exhibited his work across the country, created a public installation for the MTA, and lectured for the Pratt Institute, Bowling Green State University, and Lawrence University among others. His Chroma exhibition paintings are based on a large-scale commission for the NYC Public Schools, that is to be unveiled fall 2024.

My work continues to take cues from the city and environment around me. I am inspired by the layered lives of city living and urban density. The aesthetic of urban decay is revitalized and renewed through rediscovery and re-engaging with the sprawling cityscape. The accretion of aesthetics is fundamental to my thinking and the approach I take in creating a painting.

-Jason Rohlf

Collecting mental notes on nearly everything that forms in my imagination allows for continued exploration as countless layers of collage, mediums, and acrylic paint coalesce to become a finished painting.

-Jason Rohlf

Regardless of how hopeful my expectations are, or the intent I bring, each attempt will undergo many revisions as I participate in its creation 

-Jason Rohlf

To see all of Jason Rohlf’s available work, please click here

Shane McAdams

 Shane McAdams is an artist and writer commuting between Brooklyn, NY, and Cedarburg, WI. His work is deeply influenced by his youth in the southwest desert and the way nature formed the topography through erosions. McAdams' paintings reflect the dueling relationships between natural and synthetic forms. These humble materials are stretched to their limits through non-traditional applications that generate complex, abstract landscapes.

McAdams received his B.A. from the University of Kansas, Lawrence, KA in 1996 and his MFA from the Pratt Institute, New York City, New York in 2005. His work has been exhibited in regional and national museums including the Museum of Wisconsin Art, West Bend, WI, The Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI, The Kohler Art Center, Sheboygan, WI, and the Schneider Museum, Ashland, OR.

The physical sense of land and material has continued to guide my work, both as a symbol of process and as a source of content. I’m interested in how the incremental effects of time can create something more structured and unique than I can make with my own hands. My work merges this accidental language with a more traditional language of painting and by contrast, questions what looks like nature, what symbolizes nature through the process, and what is nature.

-Shane McAdams

The form in my work is often analogous to the methods of its creation. Their structures emerge from the physical properties inherent in the specific, mundane materials I use, such as Elmer’s glue, correction fluid, ballpoint pen ink, and resin. I stretch the limits of these media by subjecting them to non-traditional applications that ultimately generate complexity that belies the simplicity of their creation, like agates polished in a tumbler for two weeks, or sandstone outcroppings rubbed down by the wind for millennia.

-Shane McAdams