MASSIMODECARLO Pièce Unique is pleased to present DNA:Orange:Work, McArthur Binion’s first solo project in Paris. This large scale abstract paper work on wood, from his 2020 DNA:Work series, investigates the nature and limits of the minimalist grid to construct a profoundly personal narrative.

The work’s geometric pattern is blended with paper fragments from the artist’s phone book and other personal documents, arranged rhythmically on the board. The composition that emerges from the layering of the paper’s grids with the grid created by the oil paint stick, both amplifies and negates the grid, offering a reflection on the definition of minimalism, which can be highly personal, and misleadingly simple.

Since the 1970’s, McArthur Binion has sought to challenge the very nature of minimalism, and has done so through his personal philosophy, merging the pictorial grid with archival belongings such as personal family photographs, phone books or found documents from the history of the Afro-American community.

Binion’s reduced combination of colors and forms exudes formal mastery, and carries multiple layers of meaning- beginning with his search for the legacy of modernist abstract painting in relation to the wider context of human society needing to leave traces of itself behind, and the impulse to project itself towards the future.

McArthur Binion’s work is resolutely political albeit subtle. Curator Lowery Stokes Sims described Binion’s DNA series as addressing ‘notions of self-awareness and self-discovery, a conscious reflection on himself and on the historical discourse he has contributed to’.