The exhibition Batlle Pagk consists of work by two New York based artists, sculptor Jay Battle and painter Paul Pagk.

Batlle is exhibiting a wall work “Stencil Index Utensil” loosely derived from the architecture of a fire escape. Its wooden armature is aggressed by red spray paint echoing a 3D psycho-geographical map. The movable floor piece “optimistic Island Nostalgia” recalls the form of gas station pumps using light fixtures, electrical chord and hardware. The third work in the show could be read as a totemic tree rooted in a feathered pillow and graced with aluminum leaves. Playing with issues of sculptural formalism, Batlle’s pieces combine wit and combative vigor, their conceptual rigor subverted by freestyle funk.

Likewise, Pagk deploys the tropes of modernism, conceptualism and minimalism to build his own material vocabulary that both extends and subverts all the aforementioned categories. The overtly rich surface of these oils provides a charged field for a range of graphic tactics that play off everything from the architectural to the archaic. If the strength of these paintings first seems generated by their striking coloration, rose, chartreuse, celadon, equally important is the intelligence of their composition and physical tactility. Pagk is exhibiting three large paintings along with a variety of smaller works.

Jay Batlle was born in 1976 and studied at the University of California, Los Angeles and on a fellowship at Atelier’s 63 in Amsterdam. He has exhibited in California at a variety of spaces including Beyond Baroque, Spanish Kitchens, Studio 870, Echo Park Projects and Refusalon in San Fransisco. On the East Coast, he has show work at Exit Art, Rare, Hunter College, Dorsky Projects, Queens and “New Attitudes in Sculpture” in Boston. He has has solo and group shows with Esso Gallery, New York. In Europe he has shown with Galerie Frank, Paris, at Loop in Berlin, and has forthcoming shows at Galleria 1000eventi in Milan and Alberto Peola, Turin.

Paul Pagk was born in London and grew up in Paris where he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He has exhibited widely in Europe including Galerie Eric Dupont, Paris and has a recent retrospective in Montbeliard. In New York,  his solo show opened at The Thread Waxing Space in 1991 followed by a second solo exhibition in 1993. Pagk has shown work at AC Project Room, CRG, Ronald Feldman, Pierogi, Von Lintel and with Geoffrey Young in Great Barrington. His work is in numerous private collections as well as the Musée de Toulouse, Foundation 20/21, New York, and FRAC Picardie where his drawings were selected by Gabriel Orozco for a show this year.