Charles Mayton’s first solo exhibition in Italy presents a series of new works conceived expressly for the American Academy in Rome interrogating the techniques and vocabulary of painting, as well as its historical muses and conventions. Comprised of paintings citing classical, modern, and contemporary forms, the installation, presented as a frieze of vignettes, posits a productive tension between pure material and represented image.

The title refers to a triangulated structure encompassing the fundamental linguistic link that the words Tableau Table Tavolo–despite their respective cultural associations–all share with the notion of consumption, in both a visual and metaphorical sense. Favoring experimentation and play, Mayton uses a variety of painterly approaches to explore the essence of a form central to painting and dining, that of a table, and its function and use as both an object and a site of convivial exchange. Often, he pushes the pictorial plane to its limit, overloading the sedimented surface to the point that medium and image migrate to other supports: table tops, baking paddles, and altered produce boxes that the artist has collected in Rome. Painted motifs, too, are woven together, sometimes literally, coming to life in a stew of endlessly moving parts.

Born in 1974 in Dallas, Texas, Mayton lives and works in New York. He has studied at the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College and the Ringling School of Art and Design. His work has been featured in numerous gallery shows in New York, Paris, Los Angeles, and London. Recent exhibitions include Two-Step at the Power Station in Dallas and Painter Painter at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

The exhibition is curated by Peter Benson Miller.

Opening hours are: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 4:00 to 7:00pm until May 10, 2015.