Tim McFarlane: All Of This Is True

Bridgette Mayer Gallery is pleased to present All Of This Is True, a new solo exhibition by Tim McFarlane. The exhibition will be on view from Tuesday, April 2 to Saturday, May 18, 2024. Bridgette Mayer Gallery will host an Artist Reception & Happy Hour in celebration on Friday, April 5 from 5:00 to 7:30 PM.

All Of This Is True is McFarlane’s sixth solo exhibition with Bridgette Mayer Gallery and represents almost two years of exploration and reexamination within the artist’s oeuvre. McFarlane considers the various identities and dualities that are baked into the human experience, pulling us in different directions and ultimately creating contradiction within ourselves. McFarlane invites and even celebrates this contradiction in this new body of work, taking his cue from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself: “Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)” In All of This Is True, McFarlane’s signature glyphs are reimagined in a softer, more contemplative state. New triangular configurations are used to explore space and structure in fresh ways. He states:

Contradictions are just an inherent part of being human. I don’t know if the concept of “both and more” is a real thing, but it best describes a large amount of what it means to be a human being, that is, we contain multitudes and can do and be many things at once. The old saying about “being able to walk and chew gum at the same time” also seems to fit. We move through the world being multiple things to different people at the same time: offspring, siblings, lovers, teachers, parents, workers, bosses, co-workers, etc… and present ourselves differently to accommodate those roles. This calls to mind how I’ve reckoned with the impact of multiple creative paths needing expression at the same time in my work recently…Much like the navigation of social, familial and personal structures within our lives and outwards to the world at large, I’ve attempted to find avenues of liberation and freedom through color, space and light within the hard-edged, geometric arrangements that populate most of my new paintings.

About the Artist:

Tim McFarlane is a painter based in Philadelphia, PA. His abstract paintings and works on paper examine the fluid and contradictory nature of memory and place as informed by time, with an emphasis on color, multilayered systems and process. McFarlane’s observations of the visual impact of human activity and his everyday engagement with man-made and natural environments form the basis of his work. In addition to painting, his practice includes site specific mixed media installations, murals, photography and digital experimentation.

A 1994 Temple University/Tyler School of Art graduate, Tim has exhibited his work extensively in the U.S. in group exhibitions and major art fairs in New York, Miami, Dallas and San Francisco. McFarlane’s paintings and works on paper reside in numerous private and public collections such as The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, The Woodmere Museum of Art, The Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art, Bucknell University, Fox School of Business (Temple University) and West Virginia University. His work is represented by the Bridgette Mayer Gallery (Philadelphia).