Henry Codax

20 January—25 February 2017

galerie lange + pult is pleased to present an exhibition with a collection of new monochromatic paintings by Henry Codax.

Henry Codax, began to exhibit his works in New York in 2011. His exhibition history aside, there is little biographical information on the artist, who prefers to remain unidentified.

Since 2011 Codax painted his canvases in monochromatic colours. His reduced palette make him contemplating authenticity and authorship. In its consequece, the radical reduction is a device to flatten the meaning and individuality of every painting – ironically it has become something of a trademark of Codax himself.

Codax work is radically minimal, it is pure in colour and it is huge in scale. Here, the specific proportions of these possibilities include six paintings in total, five large square diptychs and one smaller, vertical and half sized rectangle.

For Codax there is a certain normative, everyday quality that comes around with the paintings, a quality that is sometimes missed because of the seriousness associated with abstraction. But for Codax, «Colors are everywhere, in every situation. A monochrome painting isolates what is ubiquitous».

Another aspect of his monochrome paintings is that they function somewhat like a mirror. They are essentially blanks. With little evidence of the hand that made them, it is harder to attribute subjectivity to them than with most other art. So people are confronted with themselves a bit more, or at least with their own preoccupations or assumptions about the work – including who made it.