El Sol Theater

January 04, 2016, 8:46am

In The Studio: John Phillip Abbott’s Choice Words

Occupying a small space in the long-since vacant, historic El Sol Theatre in downtown Silver City, New Mexico, John Phillip Abbott’s second floor studio is made immediately recognizable by the makeshift spray booth on the wall just outside his front door. Inside, I found him busy packing work for two solo exhibitions opening the same weekend in January: Turquoise Sunset at Devening Projects + Editions in Chicago, and On Any Sunday at Pierogi Gallery in New York. While the work that comprises On Any Sunday is a continuation of his familiar geometrically abstract text and word paintings, Turquoise Sunset marks the beginning of a newer, slightly more experiential body of work that has Abbott revisiting his approach to painting. –Claude Smith, Albuquerque/Santa Fe Contributor

John Phillip Abbott | Cosmos, 2015, spray paint on canvas, 36 x 30 inches; image courtesy the artist