MD TOKON SOLO SHOW OPENS AT LEONARD TOURNÉ GALLERY

Md Tokon, River Flow in the Light, Acrylic on Canvas, 48 x 48 inches

Md Tokon’s lively and vivacious recent abstractions are predicated on color, light and space. He creates a visual and emotional environment ripe with gesture, layer, raw energy and improvisation. Tokon's is a new world where color feeds other colors and is tempered by a deeply considered meditation on the nature of art. It is simple, pure and organic.

Tokon is in love with color and in love with the cities in which he grew up. His paintings mimic the style of the soil house walls of his childhood home in Bangladesh. The soil, the ocean, rain, sky, light and surface, music lyrics, harmony and invention, monochrome and minimalism are all evident influences in his work.

As a teenager, Tokon was inspired to pursue a career as an artist. His first painting was completed at age 10. City life, with its vibrant atmosphere and social structure, has made a great impact on him. His destination is unknown. But he is ready to walk the land as long as he is not tired. Tokon has developed a significant body of work, influenced by his extensive travels, that is often poetic, meditative and pleasing to the eye. His paintings trap the light within their layers, building up surfaces that are at once opaque and luminescent. The result is highly emotional and energetic.

Tokon's works are pure abstraction—concerned with the depiction of emotions rather than objects—with traces of a deep reverence for the Impressionist masters. In his work, Tokon applies many layers of paint, using his breadth of emotion, masterful gesture and instinctive understanding of color. His paintings tell stories of nature and human emotion and communicate to the viewer in a mysterious way. Space—sometimes interior space, other times inner space or landscape—plays a significant role in Tokon's works. His works are closely connected to dreams and illusions. In his use of color, he has displayed a certain romantic concern for vivacious, lively hues and soulful texture. Best described as "lyrical and atmospheric abstraction," Tokon's works also convey insight into life and a spiritual attachment. 

American abstract painter Ronnie Landfield said of Tokon, "I have written in the past that Md Tokon's work was accomplished, well made, and expressive of his personal experience and of his sense of color and nature. Of late his work has become all the more succinct, direct, and to the point as he has matured into a painter who has a clear idea of what he needs to paint about. It is no small accomplishment to travel from one culture to another and to absorb what is universal and important from both cultures; and be able to reflect those insights and to create works of art that resonate meaning to all. Md Tokon has evolved into a very fine emerging young artist who has grasped the essence of the East and the West in his work."

Md Tokon was born in 1978 and grew up in New York and Bangladesh. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Art and Communication Design from the City University of New York and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing and Painting from the Institute of Fine Arts, Dhaka University. With the help of mentors, Tokon studied for many years at the Art Students League of New York under Ronnie Landfield, Mariano del Rosario and Larry Poons. In 2012, Tokon received the Richard Lillis Memorial Scholarship in New York.

In addition to Leonard Tourné Gallery, Tokon's works have been exhibited at the Queens Museum of Art, Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden, Aicon Gallery (New York), Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University, and Jorgensen Gallery at the University of Connecticut, among others. His paintings are in a number of public and private collections, including the City University of New York, the Grace Institute, Tower 49, and Le Pain Quotidien, Soho, in New York; Chung Design in Memphis, Tennessee; Clareo Partners in Chicago, Illinois; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Bengal Foundation in Bangladesh; and the High Commission on Canada. His solo exhibition runs through March 28.

For additional information or to schedule a viewing, please contact Leonard Tourné Gallery at (212) 219-2656 or info@leonard-tourne.com.