Side Room is pleased to present its next exhibition, Chuck Webster: 25 Years, 10 Paintings, and a Box of Drawings, which will be on view by appointment and online between November 30, 2022 and January 31, 2023.

Presented as an informal mid-career survey, this exhibition includes works in multiple media made over a 25-year span, from the late-1990s to today. Characterized by their lush materiality and an almost glyphic visual language, Webster’s paintings and works on paper evoke fables of hidden knowledge, mysterious realms, and esoteric transfigurations. Works like Hex, 2007, Spiderland, 2010, or Redoubt (Red), 2018 suggest primordial origins, both plant and animal, and like Glyph from an Italian Fireplace, 2007 or Secret, 1997, compositional symmetries set off subtleties of form and surface texture.

Webster’s singular iconography is manifested through an intuitive, yet rigorously material, studio practice. He responds to the energy of his surfaces, tools and matter, whether the specific hardness of a certain pencil, the viscosity of his handmade oil paint, the antique handmade paper he works on, or the glass-smooth surfaces he achieves. He aims to create a fragile symmetry between the material, the formal, and the narrative aspects of the work.

The work Please Feel Free to Look Through the Books, 2007, is comprised of a hand-painted box that contains a stack of 18 loose drawings, demanding the hands-on physical engagement of the viewer, confronting them with the material energy of each drawing. It creates a familiar, close relationship where the work can change through its immediate and intimate context.

Evoking comparison to artists like Paul Klee, Philip Guston, or Tom Nozkowski, Webster’s work is ultimately a serious meditation on abstract painting, a continuation of a dialogue engaged also by his famed predecessors. Like Klee in particular, Roberta Smith writes in 2012 that Webster’s paintings "have a strange, irrepressible scale, a largeness that exceeds their size and creates a distinctive, slightly comedic sense of intimacy.”

Chuck Webster was born in Binghamton, NY and received a BA from Oberlin College in 1992 and a MFA from American University in 1996. He has had numerous solo exhibitions, including those at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (2019 print survey), Planthouse, New York (2021, 2020), Zevitas Marcus, Los Angeles (2021, 2015), Ziehersmith, New York (2012, 2011, 2008, 2006, 2005, 2003), Betty Cuningham, New York (2017, 2013) and Salander O’Reilly (2007). The artist’s work can be seen in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art; Baltimore Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the Dallas Museum of Art. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including the Milton and Sally Michel Avery Visual Arts Fellowship at Yaddo, 2010 and 2000; the NAAF Fellowship at The American Academy in Rome; the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award in Painting at The American Academy of Arts and Letters; and the Winter Fellowship at the Fine Art Works Center in Provincetown MA, 2004. He has engaged in collaborations with artists including Eddie Martinez and most recently, with writer and art critic John Yau. Webster lives and works in New York City.

Chuck Webster: 25 Years, 10 Paintings, and a Box of Drawings can be seen by appointment at 544 Pacific Street, Apt. 3, Brooklyn, NY 11217. For further information, please contact Gilles Heno-Coe at gilles@sideroomgallery.com. Visit us on Instagram @sideroomgallery.