Solomon Projects is pleased to present White Paintings an exhibition featuring large-scale paintings and a series of steel wall reliefs by St. Louis artist Jerald Ieans. The exhibition will be on view April 2nd March 14th 2005. An opening reception will be held on Saturday evening, April 2nd from 6 to 8 pm. The artist will be present.

The title of the exhibition, White Paintings, refers to the way Ieans talks about his latest paintings. While the paintings are not without color, they are not overtly colorful. Ieans's distinctive blues, oranges and pinks fade away to mere hints of color or shades of white. Color has personal associations for Ieans. As he began thinking about the "connotations of white" -- snow, skin color, marshmallows -- the series evolved into a formal response to the concept of white as the "absence of color." These paintings recall Ieans's early interest in color-field painting and minimalism, and pay tribute to the late Agnes Martin whose paintings Ieans describes as composed of "veils of color." In addition to the paintings, Solomon Projects premieres Ieans's first foray into sculpture. The wall reliefs are composed from the steel plates the artist used to make a series of monoprints in 2003, and expand the ideas of movement and spatial depth seen in the paintings.

Ieans was born in Lake County, Illinois in 1970. He is self taught, choosing to bypass art school in favor of painting daily in his studio, reading about art and visiting the Saint Louis Art Museum where he studied their collection of modern and contemporary masters. In 1994, Ieans had his first solo exhibition at the Saint Louis Art Museum. In 2001, his paintings were seen in Freestyle at The Studio Museum in Harlem, and in 2002, he was selected by Robert Storr as an artist of special interest for Artforum. In 2002, Ieans had his first solo show in New York City at Lucas Schoormans Gallery. In 2003, Ieans published his first series of prints with Wildwood Press in St. Louis. His paintings are in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the St. Louis Art Museum and The Studio Museum in Harlem. This is the artist's third solo exhibition at Solomon Projects.