This Way To That Way
NEW YORK, NY : On Wednesday, April 25th, 2018 ABXY invites you to the opening of an exhibition by emerging artist VERNON O’MEALLY. The show, entitled “This Way To That Way” marks O’Meally’s third solo exhibition. It will be co-curated by the artist and ABXY founder, Allison Barker. Barker discovered O’Meally in 2013 and has been working closely with the artist ever since. Since 2016, the artist has been making plans for his much anticipated, interactive audio-visual installation, which he will reveal opening night. His work has been been featured in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Whitewall Magazine, Arte Fuse, Street Art NYC, Bowery Boogie and many, many more. Notable collectors include: Paige Reifler (model), Jack Giarraputo (producer), and John Barker (Neuberger Berman).
The works presented in this exhibition were produced in a kind of synesthetic trance, one, at times, enhanced by the hallucinatory powers of drugs like LSD. A devoted student of modern neuroscience, the artist is well versed in the latest research on psychedelics and their effects on human consciousness. In response to musical stimuli, these drugs have been proven to activate the portion of the brain responsible for mental imagery, memory, and meaning. The resulting sensations of wonder and increased experiential significance are now studied in the scientific community for their therapeutic potential. In a similar pursuit, when O’Meally works under the influence, he does not simply depict the visions occurring in his mind’s eye; rather, he seeks to create work capable of communicating the mystical relationship between music, image, emotion, and consciousness; the divine sense of meaning we derive from all art forms, which appears perceptible in this altered state.
Artist ig: @vernonomeally
Gallery ig: @abxyles
View Artist's Press
ABOUT THE ARTIST
VERNON O’MEALLY (b. Atlanta, Georgia) is a New York based visual artist creating paintings sculptures and installations, which visualize the invisible forces that stimulate our senses and animate our lives. Working across a diverse array of media, the artist interprets intangible powers like music, energy, and emotion into electrifying visual abstractions, often taking shape in orchestral linear compositions and psychedelic fields of color. Using this unique artistic language, O’Meally is able to vividly describe both his sensory experience of the world around us and the profound sense of wonder it produces.
After graduating from the Art Institute of Atlanta in 2010, where he studied architecture and graphic design, O’Meally migrated to New York to pursue a career as a visual artist. While exploring this great metropolis in search of empty walls and creative work, he became inspired by the city’s dynamic pace and soon developed his signature, “linescapes.” O’Meally’s structured linear configurations celebrate the mystical interconnectivity of urban life. They symbolize the disintegration of earlier terms of classification and the weaving of a new shape shifting social fabric based on imagination, diversity, and spontaneity.
Fascinated by the evocative power of song, since 2015, the artist has been building a body of work, which investigates his emotional and visual responses to music. In the tradition of action painters like Jackson Pollock, O’Meally’s creation ritual is both meditative and physical. After selecting a soundtrack and preparing his painting materials (often on the gallery floor) the artist begins to move around a blank canvas like a shark circling its prey. He then executes a multi-stage plan of attack: whether he’s pouring and spraying paint, making marks with charcoal or washing his canvasses with water, O’Meally’s full body gestures translate sonic landscapes into visual ones. In his work, acoustic elements like tempo, pitch, rhythm, and timbre emerge as vacillating galaxies of pure line and color. In this way, the paintbrush becomes a music instrument, and the resulting work evidence of a stirring audio visual event.
Vernon O'Meally | Bio & Exhibit History
b.1989, Atlanta, GA.
Lives // works: Brooklyn, New York
BFA | Graphic Design, The Art Institute of Atlanta, 2010.
2018
“This Way to That Way,” Solo Exhibition, ABXY Gallery, Manhattan, New York (upcoming)
“Mask On,” Change for Kids Benefit Auction, Capitale, Manhattan, New York
2017
“NOW WE HERE,” Group Exhibition, ABXY Gallery, Manhattan, New York
“La Dolce Vita,” Group Exhibition, Fabio Scalia, SoHo, New York
“Eat Me,” Ghost Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
2016
“This is Not a Safe Space,” Group Exhibition, A+E Studios, Tribeca, New York
“Filling in the Blanks Benefit Auction,” Glen Arbor Golf Club, Bedford, New York
“Electric Dance Totem Pole,” Atelier ABXY, Solo, New York
“VERNON O’MEALLY: JUST FUNKIN’ AROUND,” Solo Exhibition, A+E Studios, Tribeca, New York
2015
“Passion for Pachyerms Benefits Auction,” Trump World Tower, United Nations Plaza, New York
“Chasing Unicorns: Mythologies of Progress in American Landscapes”, Group Exhibition, A+E Studios, Tribeca, New York
“Linescape, Centre-fuge Public Art Project ”, Lower East Side, New York
2014
“Funky Jungle”, First Street Green Park, Lower East Side, New York
“The Birth of Cool – Bushwick, Brooklyn Spoonbill – Centre-fugePublic Art Project”, Lower East Side, New York
“People’s Choice Group Show”, The Greenpoint Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
“2013 Arch NYC Group Show”, Bushwick Open Studios , Brooklyn, New York
2013
“ Arch NYC Group Show”, Bushwick Open Studios , Brooklyn, New York
ABOUT ABXY:
ABXY is a Lower East Side Gallery specializing in emerging and outsider artists. Inspired by the salon-style galleries of history’s great female art collectors – women like Peggy Guggenheim and Gertrude Stein – ABXY formed in 2015 when streetwise art advisor, Allison Barker, invited a carefully curated group of emerging artists to use her SoHo home-office as studio space. As the walls filled with their paintings, the space filled with friends and ABXY quickly became a haven for collectors and artists of all fields, backgrounds, and experience levels to discover one another. In 2017, ABXY opened an art gallery to the public for the first time. From their new Clinton Street headquarters, Barker continues to present socially beneficial exhibitions while providing studio space for her artists on the lower level of the gallery.
Gallery & Offices
9 Clinton Street
(between Houston and Stanton)
New York, NY 10002
