BRIAN DEGRAW: THE LEANING Y

Painted in gloopy brown brushstrokes on a cool cerulean panel and framed by a wabi-sabi wooden border, the words Have A NiCE DAY— with an emphatic "A" and "E" and a leaning "Y"—mark the earliest known painting of artist Brian DeGraw, made at the age of five. Set against the backdrop of the late 1970s, this primal gesture echoes a childhood saturated in color and texture: a Rothko exhibition poster pinned in a suburban basement, the striped banana seat of a Huffy Desperado, small fingers sketching into the foggy rear window of a Ford station wagon, the brown, orange and yellow bands of the Caldor rainbow. This is fertile terrain DeGraw hypnagogically mines— an excavation of memory, instinc t, and the raw delight of unselfconscious creation. In his newest series of large-scale oil paintings, DeGraw reclaims traces of that early impulse. He champions spontaneity and unconscious expression as foundational to his process, drawing a direct line between artistic freedom and the innocence of first marks. Each canvas becomes a layered conversation—graphi c precision clashing with loose, improvisational sweeps, embrac ing the dual forces of intention and instinct.

A serpentine line writhes across the works, a recurring motif that cuts through surface and struc ture alike. It functions as both destroyer and revealer—its path of era sure exposing buried layers, untouched moments of pure, liberated gesture. The visual rhythm recalls the volatile melodies of free jazz: e cstatic bursts, unexpected turns, and sudden descents into meditative stillness. DeGraw’s exhibition, The Leaning Y , channels memory, rhythm, and mov ement to unearth nascent creative roots, allowing them to organically evolve into refined a cts of invention.

Based in New York City, Brian DeGraw is a multidisciplinary self-t aught artist who works across virtually all mediums yet is firmly rooted in painting and drawing. Deeply influenced by his engagement with improvised and experimental music as a founding member of the group Gang Gang Dance) Brian DeGraw's work has been exhibited and performed internationally at prominent institutions including the Museum of Modern Art (NY), Whitney Museum of American Art (in the 2008 Whitney Biennial), The Jewish Museum (NY), The Institute of Contemporary Art (LDN), The Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), The Broad Museum (LA), Deste Foundation in (Athens) and Macro Museum (Rome). He has held solo and group exhibitions in galleries including but not limited to James Fuentes (NY/LA), Gavin Brown Enterprise (NY), Pace Gallery (NY), Tanya Leighton (Berlin), HdM Gallery (Shanghai), Loyal Gallery (Malmo), White Columns (NY), Wish-Less (Tokyo), Swiss Institute (NY) Tramps (NY), American Fine Arts (NY) and Galerie Du Jour (Paris). His work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Zabludowi cz Collection, Dakis Joannou Collection, Ragnarock Museum, and Agnes B Collection. The work has been featured in the New York Times, Frieze, and Interview DeGraw lives and works in New York City.