Mixed Greens is thrilled to present A(MY) MIDNIGHT SUN, A.A. Rucci’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. This show is a departure from the figurative mini-epics that have dominated Rucci’s oeuvre and exhibitions for the past ten years. In this new body of work, Rucci engages abstraction and offers us unadulterated access into his private celebration of life.

Over the last year, Rucci has focused on symbolic, hard-edge abstraction, full of interwoven shape and color, to induce an immediate emotional response. The open-ended experience is created by his use of palette, pattern and surface sheen. The relationships, however, are not loose and go beyond the formal. Every wedge and color is referential to both a specific space and time. Amusement parks, bridges, vineyards, palaces and a restaurant are sources for the intensely personal narrative.

Rucci’s use of pattern is inspired by the shifting perspectives of late Medieval and early Renaissance art, and, more importantly, is directly rooted in his embrace of the urban landscape of New York, the grandeur of the Austrian countryside and his absolute delight in meeting and marrying his wife, Amy, last year. He openly states that this show is a love letter to her. With that in mind, Rucci’s move away from illustrative and nostalgic figures to emotionally charged patterns and colors is an overt expression of the immediacy and beauty of life. Standing among the dimensional paintings, with their tailored spaces and rhythmic colors, the viewer finds him/herself physically and emotionally situated. And the single perspective multiplies. A gentle melancholy grounds the paintings in reality, while the more playful and romantic passages highlight an exuberant sincerity and optimism.

A catalog, including essays by David Cohen and Alison Hearst, as well as interviews with Odili Donald Odita and Jade Dellinger, will accompany the exhibition.

Mixed Greens is thrilled to announce Brian Jobe's first project with Mixed Greens and his first solo project in New York City. Since the fall of 2008, Mixed Greens exterior windows have functioned as a project space. This time the installation will move beyond the windows, to highlight the fire escape.

Jobe's Tuft vs. Turf series uses industrial zip-ties to cover surface elements of preexisting objects. His Minimalist approach to mark- making utilizes these brightly colored, mass-produced ties in a repetitive, controlled, and obsessive manner. Thousands of tightly queued plastic ties emphasize otherwise overlooked structures, such as a log of rotting timber, a roadside marker, or even an iron cattle guard.

For this installation, Jobe re-imagines the Mixed Greens fire escape (on the façade of the gallery building) as an architectural element recently overtaken by this industrial "growth." It is as if a yellow moss crept over the structure in a sneak attack. However, Jobe's unnaturally occurring organism is non-threatening. Much like Nina Katchadourian's Uninvited Collaborations with Nature, Tuft vs. Turf (Fire Escape) achieves playful results.