James Bartolacci: Time To Leave

Anat Ebgi is pleased to announce Time To Leave, a solo exhibition by New York based painter James Bartolacci on view at 6150 Wilshire Blvd, September 17 – October 22, 2022. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and in Los Angeles. An opening reception will take place Saturday, September 17 from 5 – 8pm.

Time To Leave consists of six oil paintings made by Bartolacci throughout this past summer. Known for their intensely colorful documentation of queer nightlife in New York City, this exhibition focuses largely on the atmospheric elements of nightclubs and afterparties. Many works zoom in on details around the DJ booth or abandoned drinks as well as their ongoing portrayals of glistening clubgoers on the dance floor. The paintings in this exhibition take on ‘light’ both as a material investigation as well as a conceptual one—considering temporality and the passage of time. 

Concentrating on expanding their painterly lexicon for this exhibition, Bartolacci explores new brush techniques in these works. Experimenting with silicone wedges and comb tools the resulting compositions emote a sonic energy. Scratching and scraping at the canvases releases hidden subtleties of their palette of technicolor greens, blues, and magentas, creating a sound wave or ripple effect. The subjects are cast in halos literally emanating light. Evocative of strobes, solid matter appears liquid in these paintings, destabilized, at the precipice of vanishing.

Bartolacci’s color sense and bold aesthetics go outside of what is considered ‘good taste.’ But this is part of the point, a decision meant to reject what is palatable, easy, or expected much like queerness itself. Through the works in this exhibition, Bartolacci seeks to elaborate on and offers a larger description of, what can be found in queer community and nightlife, and what might happen when it’s time to leave.

James Bartolacci (b. 1988, Easton, PA) received an MFA in painting and printmaking from the Yale School of Art and a BA in art history from Brandeis University. Their work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at Galerie Perrotin, New York; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles; and Taymour Grahne Projects in London. Their work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Frieze, and California Art Review among others. Bartolacci lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.