David Richard Contemporary is pleased to present Trajectory, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Alex Couwenberg. In this body of work, Couwenberg continues to explore rectilinear forms and curved shapes on open fields of pure color. He immerses the viewer in his Southern California world with a hint of the surfing scene, car culture and pinstripes, mid-century design and architecture. His work seems calm and reductive from a distance, but upon closer inspection one realizes the complexity and subtle tensions that exist between the layering of paint and unique surfaces asymmetrically situated within the vast negative space. Tensions are further exploited between tightly controlled lines juxtaposed against loose gestural strokes and densely clustered regions spinning out into the open field to strike a perfect compositional balance and rhythm.

Alex Couwenberg has had 26 solo exhibitions and his work has been included in numerous group exhibitions in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, St Louis and other cities since 1994. Couwenberg’s work has been acquired for the permanent collections of the Laguna Art Museum in California, the Daum Museum of Art in Missouri, as well as the permanent collections of Pitzer College and Pomona College Museum of Art. His work is included in “Out of Line,” a traveling exhibition curated by the Riverside Art Museum focusing on the contributions of non-objective painting in Southern California. Couwenberg was recently awarded the highly prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for his achievements in painting. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

The exhibition will be accompanied by an on-line catalog with an essay by James Yood, who teaches modern and contemporary art history at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and also directs its New Arts Journalism program.