In this exhibition, the art emotes, “Right Back Atcha!” as reference to a return to materiality, a second look at everyday objects and tools that choreograph our lives. 

In this latest body of work Coates explores the nuanced ways in which tools of labor can define and redefine personal, social, and cultural histories. Bridging the aesthetics of two artistic generations (modern & contemporary), Coates continues to employ these 

fugitive materials as double entendres and metaphors for past and present meanings. Playing with these contexts, Coates willfully blurs the lines between our ideas of traditional painting & sculpture by combining and separating media. 

With a keen emphasis on the history of materials, Coates draws on viewers’ sensory impulses with energetic use of ultra blue, painted heavily on textured bristles of repurposed push brooms, Intertubes, and other objects of everyday use. This interplay of dynamic color choices and titles are used to “push conversations” on our notions of utility through the context of material possession. Coates sites his choice of monochromatic colors “to distill your thoughts to focus on form, line, and structural composition.” Coates says, “There’s a universal understanding of blue, from water, the ocean and its vastness. In a way, it connects us all to the natural world."

Coates material form and color to shift our attention to highlight how humanity constantly innovates on the ideas embedded in everyday objects and reimagine their utility the longer we physically possess them. What we know about them is attributed to our journey of discovering ourselves.