Paul Yanko | Primary Structures

September 12, 2024 – February 23, 2025 | opening reception: Saturday, September 14, 4 – 6 pm

Employing vast color palettes, juxtaposing architectural with organic shapes and creating relief-like surfaces by varying paint densities, abstract painter Paul Yanko (b. 1968, Youngstown, OH) of Greenville, SC, has developed and mastered a masking technique that affords his compositions both flat and illusionistic views. The artist encourages the viewer to consider his interest in reconciling two distinct components of painting: rigorously developed configurations of shape and less controlled methods of paint application based on pouring. Over the course of his career, Yanko has found harmony in these two seemingly contradictory methods. Like the yin and yang of ancient Chinese philosophy, the two opposing qualities are actually complementary and create balance. His bright and color-packed paintings are meticulously built in layers of acrylic paint mixed with various mediums over collaged surfaces – the end result only truly appreciated in person, where one can observe the fluctuating terrain of their surfaces. Primary Structures presents an exceptional selection of work in Yanko’s primary medium – painting – as well as a handful of monotypes, a medium that the artist has explored in several series.

Yanko has a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art (1991) and a MFA in painting from Kent State University (1995). While residing in northeastern Ohio, Yanko exhibited his work at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art and the McDonough Museum of Art. In 2002, he was the recipient of an Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Grant. In 2011, he received a Surdna Foundation Fellowship, which was applied toward travel to the Northern Territory of Australia to research Indigenous art practices. In 2004, he moved to Greenville, SC, with his wife, painter Enid Williams, to teach in the Visual Arts Department at the South Carolina Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities. Yanko continues to exhibit both regionally and nationally, and his work is included in private and public collections, including The Johnson Collection (Spartanburg, SC); the Greenville County Museum of Art (Greenville, SC); the Medical University of South Carolina Contemporary Carolina Collection (Charleston, SC); and the Akron Art Museum (Akron, OH). He is represented by The George Gallery in Charleston, SC, and Hampton III Gallery in Greenville, SC.