Opening Reception - Jon Serl: No Straight Lines

David Zwirner is pleased to announce an exhibition exploring the art and legacy of self-taught American painter Jon Serl (Joseph Searles, 1894–1993), which will take place at the gallery’s East 69th Street location. The son of a vaudeville family, Serl acted in traveling shows as a child, took on other unconventional roles, and came to painting seriously only later, in the 1940s. Drawing from his own freewheeling life and myriad experiences, Serl adopted a pictorial idiom and highly expressionistic style that embrace the spectrum between reality and fantasy; his figurative paintings depict still lifes, landscapes, and a range of everyday subject matter-an artist in the studio, a procession of chapel attendees, a couple waltzing-in bold colors and formations that appear as if presented on stage.

Organized by the gallery in collaboration with the artist Sam Messer, this exhibition will feature a robust selection of works by Serl as well as those by contemporary painters-including Messer, Katherine Bradford, Louis Fratino, Brook Hsu, Andy Robert, Dana Schutz, and Josh Smith—who are inspired by his imaginative compositions.