Andrew Kreps Gallery is pleased to present the work of Ruth Root. This is Root's third solo exhibition at the gallery. Root has also recently shown at the Seattle Art Museum and Galleria Franco Noero, in Torino, Italy.

The exhibition will feature large, geometric enamel paintings on thin, shaped aluminum panels. The installation of the paintings directly engages the architecture of the gallery. Root's distinctive, idiosyncratic sense of color and line is evident. Brightly colored forms push against each other to create imagery suggestive of floor plans or walking maps of city neighborhoods; the artist likens it to "walking from the East Village to Chelsea to Chinatown." These new paintings mirror the density and surprise of urban living.

These metal cut outs combine the scale and formal considerations of Root's previous geometric abstract paintings with the irregular shapes of smaller works on paper which the artist has been making since 1998. Root plays with traditional figure-ground relationships, creating paintings that contain no negative space and draw on references from Ellsworth Kelly and Richard Tuttle to 19th Century silhouette cut outs. Like her previous paintings these new works do not contain negative space or foreground/background relationships. Unlike her previous paintings that included eyes that look back at the viewer, or abstractions smoking cigarettes, in this show, such anthropomorphic details have been left aside. Instead the internal workings of each painting, and its relationship to its environment, take precedence.

The exhibition will be on view from April 26 - May 24, 2003. A reception will be held for the artist in the gallery on April 26th from 6-8 pm, 516 West 20th St., New York City. For information call 212-741-8849.