New York, NY - My Pet Ram is pleased to present NO LOTTO, an exhibition of recent paintings by Japeth Mennes, opening Friday, April 18th and on view through May 18th. Please join us for the reception on Friday, April 18th from 6-9pm.

In NO LOTTO Japeth Mennes distills ordered clarity from the clutter of everyday signage and incidental objects in cities. His typical inspiration is printed pictograms of functional objects, such as a security camera or a commercial washer. With each source standing at a map-and-territory removed from the tangible world, Mennes elevates it to a carefully composed abstraction, returning the images to the physical realm in the codified language of hard-edge painting. 

The subject matter of these paintings is the interplay between physical object and graphic sign, and the materials of painting are the complication and ultimate transcendence in this relationship. That these canvases strive to conceal the qualities of painting per se is perverse poetry, paring the work to color, form, and a nod to the thing-ness of painting without flourish. Each element is considered and executed to
perfection: no line breached, no color muddled. Formally, each painting is a complex relationship between rectangles and the edges of the canvas, situated carefully in concentric and tiled arrangements. The
occasional curved or diagonal line thus becomes a startling and refreshing break–even a comedic element, as in the cord to the security camera or the rainbow graphic on the otherwise-blank lottery sign. Shaped canvases fit so seamlessly in this body of work that they sometimes go unnoticed by the casual viewer. 

Not just any old sign fits this project. There must always be an act of mediation encoded in its meaning: a crate encloses cargo, shutters block windows, diskettes hold information. With these subjects and their mysteries of what lies inside or beyond, there is a startling contrast to the stylistic clarity of the work. This disjunction is the essential tension in the paintings–its compelling value that prevents any easy conclusion that the work is fundamentally an exercise of formalism or semiotics.

NO LOTTO will be on view beginning Friday, April 18 through Sunday, May 18, 2025. The gallery is located at 48 Hester Street in the Lower East Side. Gallery hours are Thursday - Sunday from 12-6pm and by   appointment. For more information, please email info@mypetram.com.

Japeth Mennes is an artist who lives in New York City. Recent exhibitions include the 2024 two person show “Remedy” w/ Mie Kongo at Left Field Gallery, (Los Osos, CA), a 2024 solo show “Produce Boxes” at 57w57 Arts (NYC), the 2023 solo show “Waltz” at 65 GRAND (Chicago), “Framework” a 2022 two person show at My Pet Ram (NYC), the 2021 solo show “City Paintings” at Ampersand Gallery (Portland, OR), as well as group exhibitions at Taymour Grahne (London), 57w57 Arts (NYC), The Ekru Project (Kansas City, MO), and a 2022 three person show at Stockton University (NJ). He received his MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and his BFA from Kansas City Art Institute. His work is in the collections of Agnes Gund, NYC, the Ford Corporate Art Collection, Dearborn, MI, and Fidelity Investments, Boston, MA.

Text by Jacob Feige