TS+ PROJECTS

Review by David Abir, opening Friday, June 1.

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:52:00 -0400

Review by David Abir, opening Friday, June 1.

hyperallergic: Take a look at a selection of photos we’ve...

Mon, 07 May 2012 13:37:49 -0400

The Breeder (Athens)

The Third Lind (Dubai)

James Fuentes (NYC)

Galerie Eigen & Art (Leipzig/Berlin)

hyperallergic:

Take a look at a selection of photos we’ve prepared from the 2012 Frieze New York art fair here.

Photo

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 20:17:45 -0400

Instant LA Summer 2: HEAVY HAPPY Curated by Esteban Schimpf

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 22:56:38 -0400

Still Waters by Sara Clendening

Liz Craft, Sara Clendening, Chris Coy, Gerald Davis, Marc Horowitz, Pentti Monkkonen, Maha Saab, Sarah Sieradzki, Esteban Schimpf

Carmichael Gallery
5795 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232

July 16 - August 6, 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, July 16, 6:30-10pm

Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce Instant LA Summer 2 : HEAVY HAPPY, a group exhibition curated by Esteban Schimpf and featuring works by emerging and mid-career artists Liz Craft, Sara Clendening, Chris Coy, Gerald Davis, Marc Horowitz, Pentti Monkkonen, Maha Saab, Sarah Sieradzki and Esteban Schimpf. An audacious encore to Instant LA Summer, August, 2010, HEAVY HAPPY is unmoved by vitreous polyresin and recruits its louche participants from chop-shops, tunnels of love, talk show sets and haunted manors. Heavy Happy is a congregation of sphinxes assembled from relics carried westward on dirty winds.

There will be an opening reception for the exhibition on Saturday, July 16 from 6:30 to 10pm with all of the artists in attendance. The exhibition will run through August 6, 2011.

About the Artists:

Liz Craft (b. 1970, Los Angeles, CA USA)

A Los Angeles-based sculptor whose works often comprise cast bronze, polyurethane and fiberglass, meticulously transubstantiated to create fantasies and hallucinations of everyday objects, Liz Craft plays the role of New Age nest-builder in her ongoing Candy Colored Clown Series. Beginning with a mesh surface akin to the screened windows of the suburbs, Craft transmutes flotsam from her studio’s Venice Beach environs (Latin American soccer scarves, keepsake urchin exoskeletons, collectible glassware) into unique painterly pigments. By means of a three step process of reclamation to abstraction to figuration, the resulting objects—churlish, and sometimes cloying, clown faces—speak articulately of post-minimalist abstraction.

Craft received her BFA from Otis Parsons in 1994 and MFA from UCLA in 1997. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited her work include Brand New Gallery, Milan (2011), Patrick Painter Inc., Santa Monica (2010, 2008), Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2010, 2007, 2004, 2003), Alison Jacques Gallery, London (2009, 2007, 2006), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2009, 2007), Musee des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne (2008), White Cube, London (2008), Hayward Gallery (2007), Gering & Lopez Gallery, New York (2007), Halle für Kunst, Lunëberg (2006), Peres Projects, Los Angeles (2005), 2004 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2004), Regen Projects, Los Angeles (2004), Migros Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2004), Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York (2003), Sadie Coles HQ, London (2002), Public Art Fund, New York (2002), The London Institute Gallery, London (2002) and The Barbican Centre, London (2001).

Residencies and awards include the Alfred van Bohlen Award (2006), Blekede Residency (Lunenburg Landkriest) (2006), Linz Centum Fur Gugenwarts Kunst Residency (2000) and Tiffany Award (1999). She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Sara Clendening (b. 1980, Philadelphia, PA USA)

Viewers of Sara Clendening’s work can almost feel phantom fingertips kneading their own skin as the trained massage therapist performs the spa culture ritual to her entrancing sculptural works of art. Of equal note is the rakish pathos that takes center stage in her characters’ intriguing battle to upstage their cultural inheritance.

Clendening received her BFA in 2003 from the School of Art Institute of Chicago with a focus on painting and sculpture and in 2007 attended The Mountain School of Art, Los Angeles. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited her work include Green Gallery, Milwaukee (2009, 2005), China Art Objects, Los Angeles (2009), Bonelli Contemporary, Los Angeles (2008), Artscape, Baltimore (2008, 2005), Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland (2007), Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita (2006), Daniel Reich Gallery, New York (2004), Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2004), and LACE, Los Angeles (2004). Art fairs include the LA Art Fair with Ooga Booga, Los Angeles (2008), Frieze Art Fair with Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, London (2007), Milwaukee International Art Fair, Wilwaukee (2006) and NADA with General Store, Milwaukee (2005).

Publications in which Clendening and her work have been profiled include the Village Voice and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She is also featured in Younger than Jesus: Artist Directory, published by the New Museum and Phaidon Press in 2009. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Chris Coy (b. 1981, Fayetville, NV USA)

“My work deals in part with the indeterminacies of terminal-based culture,” explains multi-disciplinary artist Chris Coy. “Objects exist to be digitized into their infinitely reproducible other - a digital double in triplicate. Nothing is fixed. The edges are fuzzy. The pixel is our material.” Stark, stern and self-confident in reproduction, his paintings trespass the recently-resurrected Neo-Minimalist clubhouse. Akin to props on a talk show or sitcom: the surface and support is crafted almost entirely from ephemeral materials, and its monochrome apes the hue of the Hollywood green-screen. Says Coy, “The pseudochromes with their chroma key green paint jobs and white crosses function as recursive markers - indices to alternate sites of post-production. They are support and armature for the everyness: invisible and unknowable cybervoids. When a blackhole looks at itself, what does it see? Does it go to the movies?”

Chris Coy completed a one day residency at Hallway Projects in 2010 and is currently earning his MFA at the University of Southern California. His work has been included in exhibitions nationally and internationally at LaViola Gallery, New York (2010), Salt Lake Art Center, Salt Lake City (2010), Pixxelpoint New Media Art Festival, Nova Gorica, Slovenia (2009), Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, Amsterdam (2009), New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2008) and JstChillin.org (the internet), amongst other venues. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Gerald Davis (b. 1974, Pittsburgh, PA USA)

Gerald Davis’ intensely detailed and delicate oil and pencil works on paper ooze a brash, youth-drenched sexuality paired with undertones of an endearingly self-conscious humility. The muted tones he employs in these works subtly but significantly enhance his emblematic motifs of memory, mirage and fantasia.

Davis received his BFA from Pennsylvania State University in 1997 and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. Select galleries and institutions that have exhibited his work include Saatchi Gallery, London (2008, 2006), Yvon Lambert Gallery (2007), Salon 94 and John Connelly Presents, New York (2006), Royal Academy at Burlington Gardens, London (2006), Peres Projects, Berlin (2006), Baronian Francey, Brussels (2006), Bergdorf Goodman, New York (2005) and Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles (2005, 2003).

Publications in which Davis and his work have been profiled include ARTnews and Art in America. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Marc Horowitz (b. 1976, Westerville, OH USA)

Marc Horowitz is a Los Angeles based interdisciplinary artist, working primarily in performance, video and installation. The central concerns driving most of his work have to do with engaging strangers in public and on the internet around absurdist principles. His projects engage in a dialog with a diverse range of subjects including entertainment, advertising, architectural environments, commerce and the quest for daily meaning. He is constantly making lists of potential inventions, neologisms, moneymaking schemes, jokes, drawings, websites, characters and impromptu videos. His work speaks to “the moment,” reflects and critiques American idealism, expansionism and capitalism; and parodies pop culture so successfully it becomes re-appropriated by it.

Horowitz received his BS Marketing from Indiana University, Bloomington and is currently earning his MFA at the University of Southern California Roski, School of Fine Arts. Select solo and group exhibitions includeCaminamos. Alrededor es Imposible, curated by Lorenzo Sandoval, La Casa Encendida, Madrid (2011), The Advice of Strangers.com, funded by Creative Time, curated by Nato Thompson (2010), The National Dinner Tour & The Signature Series. Somewhere Else, curated Paul Ardenne, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris (2010), talkshow247.com, ARoS Museum, Denmark (2009), Twitter Drawings. The Future Is Not What It Used To Be, Postmasters Gallery, New York (2009), NYCommercial & Google Maps Road Trip, Conflux Festival (NYU), New York (2009), Golden America Loves You, Circus Gallery, Los Angeles (2009), The Me & You Show, The Hayward Gallery Project Space, curated by Ralph Rugoff, London (2008), 7 Days in a Sentra,Working Men, curated by Barbara Polla and Paul Ardenne, Analix Forever Gallery, Geneva (2008), The Center for Improved Living, Galerie Analix Forever, Geneva (2007), The Center for Improved Living: Life Coaching, Sister Gallery, Los Angeles (2007), Video Window, curated by Harrell Flecter, Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland (2007) and I Invented the Internet, Fluctuating Image - Contemporary Media Art, Stuttgart (2007).

Publications in which Horowitz and his work have been profiled include The Economist, Interview Magazine, The Los Angeles Times, Esse Magazine, The New York Times, ReadyMade Magazine, The Independent, Useless Magazine, Dazed & Confused Magazine and People Magazine. He was one of 25 emerging artists to be awarded a $25,000 grant in AOL’s 2010 25 for 25 Grant. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Pentti Monkkonen (b. 1975, Minneapolis, MN USA)

Pentti Monkkonen tunes a strident chord with his playful monuments, rendered both large and small in the heavy medium of cast bronze and always fraught with potent meta-narratives. His contribution to Instant LA Summer 2 : HEAVY HAPPY is a new sculpture entitled Hydra, a multi-headed bronze beast reminiscent of a late Louise Bourgeois that wails endless perfidious melodramas both private and public, yet finally begets transcendent, albeit uncertain, laughter.

Monkkonen received his BA from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2004 and his MFA from Vermont College. Select galleries, institutions and outdoor venues that have exhibited his work include the Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY (2009), Marianne Boesky Gallery (2008), Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles (2007), Daniel Hug Gallery, Los Angeles (2005), General Store, Milwaukee (2003), ACME, Los Angeles (2002, 1999) and the Armand Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2000). He currently works and lives in Los Angeles.

Maha Saab (b. 1979, New York, NY USA)

Maha Saab works range from conceptual photography and painting to post-minimalist mixed media sculpture. No matter the medium, an enigmatic sophistication marks the poetic intelligence of her socially conscious creations.

Saab received her BFA from Parsons School of Design in 2003 and her MFA from University of California, Los Angeles in 2007. Select galleries that have exhibited her work include ltd los angeles, Los Angeles (2010), Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2010), Pepin Moore Gallery, Los Angeles (2010), Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York (2010), Cardwell Jimmerson, Culver City (2010), LA><ART, Culver City (2010), Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles (2007), Hayworth Gallery, Los Angeles (2007) and Michael Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2005). She curated The Chef’s Theory at 533, Los Angeles in 2009.

Media outlets in which Saab and her work have been profiled include The L Magazine, The New Yorker and Artforum. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Sarah Sieradzki (b. 1986, New York, NY USA)

“Photographs are commonplace,” asserts genre-defying mixed media artist and photographer Sarah Sieradzki, “their conventions recognizable, and more often than not, their nostalgic obligation to a particular time and place must shine through in some glorified light. In order to confront both the physical and temporal boundaries of photographs, my work seeks to simultaneously deflate the tired old regime of the “grand photograph” and reveal some unexpected possibilities that are latent in the medium. Is it the frame that constitutes the photograph in physical space, or perhaps, its relationship to time as it reduces its authoritative force to a feeble nuance? We live in a world that serves as an interesting platform from which we can collect, perform, edit, and arrange things we see. I believe objects, photographs, materials, colors, and text, in radically different contexts and arrangements, can relieve themselves of their traditional associations and enter into new, Platonic relationships with each other. Whatever it means to place one material next to another; to imply an image of a sunset “rising” over an IKEA chair… It suggests nothing, but reminds us of everything. They are universal aesthetics that have no denomination and can be put in a vast category of Things We See.”

Sieradzki received her BFA in Photography and Visual / Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Select galleries and venues that have exhibited her work include Bushwick Open Studios, Brooklyn (2011), Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles (2010), Rainbo Club, Chicago, Monument 2 Gallery, Chicago (2010) and New York Studio Program, Brooklyn (2009). She was the 2010 recipient of the Fred Endsley Memorial Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Esteban Schimpf (b. 1986, Bogotá, Colombia)

The practice of artist and curator Esteban Schimpf traffics in irreverence and authority. The distinctive satirical voice of his work enables him to poke fun at profound subjects whilst maintaining a comically nonchalant distance. For his work God, Imagine the storm on Jupiter, which was included in the Billboard Project at Portugal Arte 10 in Lisbon, he scrawled the aforementioned title onto a large billboard in a large European square to disarm viewers and lead them into a world of the subjective, the humorous and the sublime.

Schimpf received his BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2008. His work has been featured in exhibitions worldwide, including Hang In There, curated by Jason Lazurus Co-prosperity Sphere, Chicago (2011), REVERSEVENT, organized by Thomas Macker, Joe Zorrilla, Calvin Lee, Venice, CA (2011), California Dreamin’, curated by Fred Hoffmann at Portugal Arte 10, Lisbon (2010), Billboard Project, curated by Lauri Firstenberg and Cesar Garcia of LA><ART, Los Angeles for Portugal Arte 10, Lisbon (2010) and Bad Moon at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Chicago (2008). In addition to Instant LA Summer 2 : HEAVY HAPPY, he curated its prequel, Instant LA Summer, at Carmichael Gallery, Los Angeles (2010).

Additional interests and talents of Schimpf include Culture and Loitering. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Ten Questions for Adam Krueger by Tali Wertheimer

Tue, 24 May 2011 18:58:09 -0400

Ten Questions for Adam Krueger by Tali Wertheimer:

T + interviewed one of our favorite artists, Adam Krueger, about his art, the LA art scene, and his latest installation in Breach of Privacy, curated by S+ at Carmichael Gallery.

Breach of Privacy, Curated by Simmy Swinder, Opening May 21, 2011

Tue, 10 May 2011 16:42:00 -0400

Carmichael Gallery is pleased to announce Breach of Privacy, a group exhibition curated by Simmy Swinder and featuring works by Yasmine Chatila, Hilo Chen, Adam Krueger, Alyssa Monks and Jaclyn Santos, five New York-based artists whose creative practices span a disparate range of media, yet coalesce to represent compelling explorations of voyeurism in its shifting states of ecstasy, release and isolation. Via exhilarating photorealistic oils, hauntingly subtractive mixed media works and raw black and white photography, each artist fashions his or her own unique voyeuristic allegory, some oblique, others candid, but all bound by a bittersweet philosophical thread that delves far deeper than that which is externally revealed.

Life is filled with glimpses of private moments and the artists in Breach of Privacy capture these experiences of curiosity, attraction and idleness by employing various forms of visual realism to depict a fleeting instance in their subjects’ lives and create a non-linear narrative in which the viewer is encouraged to be complicit. In their fluctuation between delicacy and darkness, the works of art both reference the poignant beauty implicit in the nature of voyeurism and brazenly confront the societal mores that condemn the shameful exhilaration such an act can provoke in the human being’s mind and body. Chatila, Chen, Krueger, Monks and Santos portray these revelations of illusion or disillusion in a manner that is equally sophisticated, skillful and considerate, offering viewers a more informed critique of contemporary life and relationships, whether real, imagined or simply viewed ambiguously from afar.

There will be an opening reception for Breach of Privacy on Saturday, May 21 from 6 to 8pm with Adam Krueger in attendance. The exhibition will run through June 11, 2011.

Yasmine Chatila (b. 1974, Cairo, Egypt)

The photographs and videos that comprise Yasmine Chatila’s captivating Stolen Moment series seize fleeting flashes of human behavior viewed through the windows of New York City’s architecturally stunning apartment buildings and transform them into timeless, edifying expositions of the world around us. In a recent conversation in Interview Magazine, Chatila elucidated of her works, which recall the spirit of movements such as German Expressionism and Film Noir, “My goal is to capture the moment and distill its essence without exposing anyone’s identity. I am not interested in who these people really are. Not knowing allows me the freedom to project onto them and fill in the gaps with my imagination.”

Chatila graduated with a B.F.A. from Parsons, an M.F.A. in photography from Columbia University School of the Arts in New York in 2002 and is the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and grants. Select galleries and institutions that have recently exhibited her work include Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid, KunstWerke, Berlin (2009) and Edelman Arts, New York, John Kohler Arts Center, Wisconsin (2008). Film festivals her work has been honored in to date include the Locarno Festival, Locarno (2007), Kunst Film Biennale, Cologne (2008) and Centre Pompidou, Paris (2009).

Chatila and her work have been profiled in Interview, Art in America, Wired, Foam, Blackbook, NY ARTS, Art Actuel and Dazed and Confused, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. She currently lives and works in New York.

Hilo Chen (b. 1942, Yilan, Taiwan)

Hilo Chen’s hyper-realistic renderings of the nude or semi-nude female form are breathtaking both in their beauty and craftsmanship. Whether lounging on a beach or emerging from a bathtub, the individual depicted in Chen’s oils on canvas often appears with her face either turned away or not depicted at all. An artistic choice intentional in its means of protecting the female’s identity without alienating it, it also affords the viewer to observe and admire her physical perfection without the guilt that the voyeuristic tendency toward such intensely visceral eye candy might otherwise induce. Chen’s uncompromising persistence in transgressing the conservative line that continues to be drawn between sexual controversy and the celebration of it has only served to forward his lengthy, successful career.

Chen graduated with a B.S. in Architectural Engineering from Chung Yien College in Taiwan in 1966. Select galleries and institutions that have recently exhibited his work include Bernaducci.Meisel.Gallery, New York (2006, 2008) and The Benton Museum of Art, Connecticut (2008). His work is represented in major international public collections, including The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, San Jose Museum of Art, California, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taipei and Taiwan Museum of Arts, Taichung, as well as in numerous private collections.

Chen and his work have been profiled in Playboy and American Art Collector, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. He currently lives and works in New York.

Adam Krueger (b. 1982, Elburn, IL USA)

Adam Krueger’s elimination of key parts of a female’s body in an individual piece, whilst simultaneously emphasizing enigmatic shapes and colors via hand-cut stencils and atypical mixed media, seductively draws viewers in and invites them to complete the image in the privacy of their own mind. At once symbolic and surreal, the concept of voyeurism takes on a new meaning when interpreted by Krueger. Ironically, or perhaps intentionally, the technical effortlessness with which he executes his work takes an affable second place to his ability to transform the entire wall, room or gallery setting in which he places it. This genius for innovative installation of his already genre-defying artwork only serves to emphasize the unique aspects of his creative practice. The negative space beyond the piece of art itself has no chance against Krueger, whose work literally knows no boundaries.

Krueger attended Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence in 2003 and graduated with a B.F.A. from Rhode Island School of Design in Rhode Island in 2004 and an M.F.A. from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 2006. He is the recipient of several scholarships, including the School of Visual Arts Fine Arts Award (2005, 2006), RISD’s Trent Burleson Painting Prize (1^st Place) and Award for Pictorial Excellence (2004) and winner of the Congressional Art Competition (1999, 2000). Select galleries that have recently exhibited his work include Coleman Burke Gallery, New York (2010), Deitch Studios, New York (2009), Marlborough Gallery – Chelsea, New York, StolenSpace Gallery, London (2008), Art Gotham, New York (2007) and David Zwirner (2006). His work is publically represented in the Erotic Museum of Barcelona, as well as in numerous private collections.

Krueger and his work have been profiled in The New York Times, The Columbia Spectator, The Times Argus, The Daily Herald and Boink Magazine, amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. He currently lives and works in New York.

Alyssa Monks (b. 1977, Ridgewood, NJ USA)

Sultry condensation, distorted bubbles and disheveled wet locks offer a tense, but thrilling contrast to the otherwise still waters that envelope the breathless faces at the heart of Alyssa Monks’ larger-than-life oils on linen. Whilst the mysterious, innocent detachment of her subjects’ expressions may lead some viewers to question whether these girls are aware that they are being observed at such close quarters and if so, should they wish to be, Monks’ intuitive ability to unravel such irrelevancies to reveal a greater message make these questions evaporate faster than steam. As she once observed, “Realism and Abstraction are in a symbiotic relationship – they need each other to exist and eventually become the same.” A notion contemplated, let alone attempted, by few artists, it is accomplished time and time again with the graceful, otherworldly ease of Monks’ brush.

Monks studied at The New School in New York, Montclair State University in New Jersey and Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence and graduated with a B.A. from Boston College in 1999 and an M.F.A from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art in 2001. Select galleries and institutions that have recently exhibited her work include Sloan Fine Art, Forbes Galleries, New York (2011), Eden Rock Gallery, St. Barth’s, David Klein Gallery, Michigan, DFN Gallery, New York, Scott White Contemporary Art, California, The Center for Contemporary Art, New Jersey, The Noyes Museum, New Jersey, Kunstmuseum, Ahlen (2010). Art fairs she has recently participated in include The Armory Show – Modern, New York (with David Klein Gallery) (2011), Art Miami (with David Klein Gallery), San Francisco Fine Art Fair (with Hespe Gallery) (2010) and Art Hamptons (with DFN Gallery) (2009). In addition to representation in national public collections such as the Savannah College of Arts, Fullerton College and the Somerset Art Association, Monks’ work is featured in numerous private collections, including the Seavest Collection and those of Howard Tullman, Danielle Steele and Eric Fischl.

Monks and her work have been profiled in The New York Post, Daily Mail, Telegraph, La Repubblica, ARTnews, The Detroit News, Harper’s Magazine and American Art Collector,amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. She currently lives and works in New York.

Jaclyn Santos (b. 1984, Pittsburgh, PA USA)

Jaclyn Santos crafts tender but unabashed oils on canvas that flout the clichéd notions of femininity to produce an unexpectedly multi-faceted array of intelligent opinions on this theme. “As an artist and individual, I have always been concerned with themes of sexuality and spirituality, and through my narrative paintings of women I embrace and question this supposed dichotomy,” Santos explains. The contemporary cultural channels uncovered and traversed in her works, which “also typically explore themes of voyeurism, vulnerability and identity,” exude a subtle sensitivity and quality of isolation in a manner that both male and female viewers connect with and embrace.

Santos graduated Cum Laude with a B.F.A. in Painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art in 2007 and is the recipient of numerous artistic scholarships and academic awards, including the Maryland Institute College of Art Painting Departmental Recognition Award (2006-2007), Francis Burns Harvey Merit Scholarship (2006-2007), Dominico Pelicano Award and Winifred M. Gordon International Programs Award, both scholarships for study abroad in Italy (2006), C. Louis Mullin Flannigan Scholarship (2005), Maryland Institute College of Art Achievement Award (2004), Maryland Institute College of Art Transfer Scholarship, Maryland Institute College of Art Talent Grant (2004-2007) and The Fund for American Studies Scholarship, Georgetown University (2003). Following exhibitions in New York, Sorrento and Miami and a two-year period as a studio assistant to Jeff Koons, Santos rose to international prominence as a semi-finalist on Bravo’s television series, Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.

Santos and her work have been profiled in The Baltimore Sun, Female Persuasion, Art Scout TV, In The Air and Gallery Beat,amongst other national and international print and online media outlets. She currently lives and works in New York.

“Hueless” at Mallick Williams

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 16:59:15 -0400

Article originally written for Gallery Crawl

By: Simmy Swinder

Mallick Williams is currently hosting its fourth exhibition since its recent launch in November 2010. Spearheaded by Director Jeremy Kaplan, who used to work for Shepard Fairey’s Subliminal Projects in Los Angeles, “Hueless” draws together nineteen street artists of varying degrees of fame and popularity, from Curtis Kulig and D*Face to Lindsey de Ovies and Sam Ske.

Katsu, A Psycho, 2011, 48’‘x48’’, oil on canvas. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co.

Lindsey de Ovies, TAADAA!, 2010, 8’’x 8’’ x 9,” bronze. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co.

Unlike many other gallery shows that strive to create a conceptual or visual link between one artwork and the next, or a retrospective exhibit that focuses on providing a range of works or one memorable work by a single artist, the works in “Hueless” are grouped by the lack of color. In addition to this shared trait, each piece is executed and presented in a well-polished, collection-ready manner. That is, though the artists are active street artists, the works in “Hueless” have an air of white-cube aspiration, and certainly placing them at Mallick Williams helps the cause. In fact, a mixed-media wall work by NTEL is reminiscent of collage work by Robert Rauschenberg or an Edward Kienholz assemblage while the photorealistic renditions by Dirk Dzimirsky and Lu Gold continue the tradition of documenting contemporary Americana paintings like those by Richard Phillips and Raplh Goings.

After numerous gallery shows showing art by street artists, the next logical step is moving those works into the ivory tower of the art world, the art museum. Jeffrey Deitch, a longtime supporter of the street art movement, has taken initiative through his still recent appointment at MOCA Los Angeles. Art on the Streets, curated by Aaron Rose, Roger Gastman and Fred Brathwaite finally gives those artists, and those aspiring to be like them, the legitimacy and historical presence they seek.

NTEL, A Prestige of Materials, 2011, 40’’ x 60,’’ mixed media. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co

Dirk Dzimirsky, Drawn Face V (Nicole), 18.1’’ x 25.2,’’ graphite on canvas. Courtesy Mallick Williams & Co.

But this comes with a price. D*Face himself is quoted saying in a 2008 interview with Fecal Face, “…the more aware the public becomes of street art the less applicable it seems to be.” No longer are their political messages about advertising, consumerism and the government the crux of their message, their names and fame are. This has led the art world—which has allowed street art to prosper commercially via gallery shows—to question whether it is possible to monetize and thus privatize an art object that was meant to be seen by the public, free of cost. Street artists also face this problem; they must walk a tightrope between integrity and profitability, between being recognized for their artistry and selling out. There is no right or wrong answer because there is no moral arbiter in the art world and thus everyone has the responsibility of keeping art, to some extent, sacred.

Other artists in “Hueless” include Distort, Erik Haze, Marissa Textor, Pete Watts, FAUST, Marco Zamora, Katsu, Nicholas Forker, Michael M. Koehler, Nathan Pickett, Russell Young and Skullphone.

“Hueless” at Mallick Williams & Co. runs through April 15^th

Mallick Williams & Co.

150 11th Avenue (Between 21^st and 22^nd St)

Take the A,C, or E train to 23^rd Street and/or the M23 bus to 11^th Avenue

Gallery Hours: Tues-F, 10-6; Sat, 11-6

Gallery Website: http://www.mallickwilliams.com

This article was taken from Gallery Crawl.

julienfoulatier: History of Art Thanks...

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 22:15:53 -0400

julienfoulatier:

History of Art

Thanks to francoiseditelagrivoise

- AO Art Observed™

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 16:46:26 -0400

- AO Art Observed™

For press inquires please email press@riveraandrivera.com

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:56:48 -0400

For press inquires please email press@riveraandrivera.com

Our Friends at Gawker Artists

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:53:58 -0400

We are thrilled to present the newest offerings of our limited editions prints by two more of our favorite Gawker Artists. Produced by Society6, these Giclée prints are printed on archival, acid free paper with archival inks. Each edition of only 100 is supervised by the artist and comes paired with a signed certificate of authenticity. Buy yours now before they are sold out!

Kelsey Bennett’s photographs are based on the concept of hypnogogia (the state between wakefulness and sleep). Her visuals resonate with the psychological unhinging of the human subconscious and her characters exist in a world where ideology meets fear and the American dream starts to feel like a hallucination saturated in color and filled with homages to cinema. Bennett is fascinated by people; their dreams, longings, fears, secrets, the composition of their identity.

Pie | 23 x 17 inches | Edition of 100 | $90 | Buy It

Eye Balls | 23 x 17 inches | Edition of 100 | $90 | Buy It

Doug Smock’s paintings feature vintage imagery, along with precise technical sensibilities, to create an interpretive and sometimes challenging visual experience. A suburban dad is enjoying a mow of the grass, oblivious to catastrophe. Was it only a test of the Emergency Broadcast System? Or, a real emergency? Like the Twilight Zone episode where a test pilot lands in a world where time has stopped and he has to rig a truck from rolling into his daughter, in Thunderstorm Terror (that’s the name on the cassette tape) it’s up to interpretation what will happen when the clock starts.

Thunderstorm Terror | 22 x 17 inches | Edition of 100 | $90 | Buy It

This is only a test | 17 x 21 inches | Edition of 100 | $90 | Buy It

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T+ in ACA magazine

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:49:05 -0500

T+ in ACA magazine

nic-rad: Oh, just a video of man and a woman having a serious...

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 13:37:37 -0500

nic-rad:

Oh, just a video of man and a woman having a serious discussion about anuses. (This is probably NSFW.)

Painter Craig Drennen describes his ‘well rendered anuses’ as unheroic portraiture.

When I had Drennen as a professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design, he wasn’t painting them just yet. But he was focused and provocative- while most of his students were just trying to keep from getting our privileged egos dirty, or alternatively trying to show just how dirty we could be. Pathetic, all of it.

Drennen was a beacon of casual sophistication in a sea of raucous self styling.

During life drawing sessions he often played a mix tape that had 15 back to back renditions of “Satisfaction.” This crescendoed in the candysexelectrovox Britney Spears version. It was funny, but also a litmus test for the all important after class peer judged conversation. The Spears disaster was only just boiling, relevant. Drennen had subtly inserted a definitive wtf among an otherwise dutifully stoic drawing curriculum.

The moderated seriousness of the whole operation was crucial. We were entering the grand tradition of staring intently at stranger’s naked bodies and trying to see something other than tits and ass and cock. It ain’t easy, kiddo.

The trick was to get your hands involved. Drawing as an act of conscious and willful interpretation. There was a lot to take in- I remember the beads of peculiarly southern gothic sweat forming on the models’ thighs. I remember one model named Anthony who had mastered the strategic flick, a method devised to keep his anatomy at a favorable proportion. There was also the sweet stink of sagging flesh, stale perfume and deodorant, sometimes raw glandular human wreak—I offer Lucian Freud as an artist who draws remarkably well from the nose.

Much credit and respect to professors like Craig Drennen. It wasn’t long before staring into the crevices was second nature. Truly an impressive feat when it had started out as our first nature.

Dawn of Man at Pacific Design Center

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 18:00:14 -0500

Dawn of Man at Pacific Design Center

Dawn of Man at photo l.a. | artLA projects, curated by TS+...

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:36:48 -0500

Dawn of Man at photo l.a. | artLA projects, curated by TS+ Projects

Photo

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:31:21 -0500

simmyswinder: David Wojnarowicz’s Fire in my Belly will be...

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 14:56:08 -0500

simmyswinder:

David Wojnarowicz’s Fire in my Belly will be screened at #photoLA as part of #artLAprojects

The Southeast Asian Art World, in a New York minute

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:26:00 -0400

“Singapore lacks a critical mass,” said a local friend of mine. Though this might be favorable for a financial industry, it stunts the art world. After visiting a handful of galleries and meeting with the Director of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art, it came to my attention that most of the collectors do not permanently reside in Singapore, most of the artists shown at local galleries are not Singaporean, and there is no major auction house in Singapore. This leads art professionals to turn to Indonesia and China for artists and art buyers, relegating Singapore to the role of middleman and making it a safe, neutral location to do business, the Switzerland of Asia.

It seems suspicious then that works sold in Singaporean galleries are exorbitantly priced. When I asked about this, a source told me they do things a little differently in Asia than they do in the West. While prices in New York and London are based on merit, reputation, provenance, and a decent amount of luck, prices in Singapore are determined based solely on auction history. Though this is certainly one way prices are decided, it becomes problematic when the winning buyers are the very galleries selling the works. This certainly happens at auctions in the West but perhaps not as blatantly and as often, which may not make it better but at least more tolerable.

Wu Gaozhong, Clay Pistol (2006)40 x 26 x 10cm, Wood and Bristle Ed. 1/6USD 8,000 at Linda Gallery

Art pricing aside, If you’re into what we’re into, delving deep into the source of the art world to meet artists and see what drives them, then go to Jogja, Indonesia. Located in Java, Indonesia’s most populated island and home to its capital, Jakarta, Jogja is where you’ll find the likes of Nyoman Masriadi - Indonesia’s most commercially popular artist - among many other talented painters (the Indonsians are amazing technicians, if you’re interested in photo-realism). Then head out to Bali where Astari Rasjid, considered the country’s best contemporary painter and also showing at Linda Gallery, the sculptor Pintor Sirait and Ashley Bickerton all reside. Ashley’s mixed-media works are bold and colorful and on occasion carry a direct critical message but never without some humor and always eye-catching. I didn’t have the opportunity of visiting Astari or Pintor, but did see Astari’s work at two of the four Singaporean galleries I visited. Pintor’s work is curious; his sculptures are at times illustrative in line, similar to Lichtenstein’s and their use of bubble writing and negative make me think of graffiti in 3D.

Nyoman Masriadi at Gajah Gallery

Ashley Bickerton, Red Scooter (2009), Oil and acrylic paint and digital print on archival canvas in carved wood artist frame, inlaid with coconut, mother of pearl and coins
I ended my voyage through the Southeast Asian art world in Jakarta where I visited many galleries found in malls (it’s too hot to be outside) and two galleries worth noting, Edwin and Linda. Edwin Gallery was nice but the one work I was interested in wasn’t for sale. Also, there were three permanent installations, which makes for great promotional material but no one to talk to me about how to go about having my roof look like it was tied together by a shoelace. Linda Gallery, whose Singapore location I also visited (with mind boggling prices) was in disarray. A sales director wasn’t present. Instead, art handlers were busy wrapping works. They told me they were preparing for an upcoming auction at 33 Auction in Singapore. Go figure.

by Simmy Swinder

Hans Van Meeuwen interviewed in Bomb Magazine

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 09:48:41 -0400

Hans Van Meeuwen is included in Younger Than Moses: Idle Worship, on view now at Benrimon Contemporary through September 6th.

Procedural Musings

Hans van Meeuwen

By Lynn Maliszewski Sep 1, 2010

Sculptor Hans van Meeuwen’s odd fragments and modifications impinge upon the confines of any space they occupy. Summoning adolescent relations and solutions combined with innate tension, he invites viewers to revert at a whim. Lynn Maliszewski speaks with him about his process and inspiration.

A SUNKID, 2003, polystyrene, fiberglass, tile adhesive, wood, fabric. 78 x 50 x 71 cm

Hans van Meeuwen is a sculptor of spaces, perusing his memory for potent visual fragments. His shrunken men, A Sunkid (2003) in particular, are immediate standouts. Despite their perches, each of the several warped individuals sway with mentions of movement. A Sunkid is decapitated yet completely nonchalant, unaffected by his diminished sensual input. He steadily caresses a glowing ball of fire in front of his body, balancing as his legs swing out to the right. The fireball appears familiar and harmless; was it the man’s skull? Has his enthusiasm for or enslavement to it tempered his reaction? Van Meeuwen’s sculpture taunts childhood fantasy and fear. He allows the viewer’s own apprehension or delight to direct his work and encapsulate childhood impulses and perception.

Despite disdain from the Minimalists of the ’70s and ’80s throughout his formal training at the Royal Academy of Art and Design in the Netherlands, van Meeuwen was handsomely rewarded by his country for creative innovation. The Prix de Rome in particular allowed travel, exploration, and evolution out of his architectural beginnings into his current ambiguously nostalgic framework. He moved to Germany in 1991, then to New York in 2004. Most recently he has taken to drawing as a potent “fast media” alongside his more involved sculpture. Capturing an expanse of emotional extremes in the viewer’s matrix of memory, van Meeuwen revitalizes outgrown impulses.

Lynn Maliszewski: What role did art play in your adolescence?

Hans van Meeuwen: I was always building stuff. I was always having cardboard and building stuff out of it. It was sort of three dimensional, I made my own toys. When I was a teenager I was always taking courses, drawing courses and painting courses. I always was creating; it was not art in that sense.

LM: Can you tell me about your most recent works in progress?

HvM: The drapes are very new. I’m still working on that one. There are four hanging; I have six more. They’ll come to seven or eight and I hope to show them on one wall. A starting point for my art is often what I remember from my childhood. When I was a little kid, we had these exact curtains. Not exactly, but kind of velvety curtains with just the pattern; that mask was somehow imprinted on. If we looked a little bit to the side, you just can see pattern. So [it was] not so strong as you see it here. [Pointing out a white, paper-mache giraffe head hanging from the ceiling] I’m waiting for a space to show this. I want him to come out of the ceiling but I want to have a really high ceiling for it. It’s a giraffe, so the neck must be really long. The neck is the easy part, its just waiting.

LM: How did you decide on such a large format for your works?

HvM: I like to use fragments. I remember looking at ancient sculptures when I was in Rome, huge statues, but they only have a nose and I thought, That’s enough. Just seeing a foot makes you think about the whole person, about the giant. Your imagination is much more active when you just see that fragment.

LM: Your sculpture regularly draws from forms found in life. Are they pulled from memory or observed in reality?

HvM: I have an interesting experience with this. I was in Provincetown, in a residency near Cape Cod. I wanted to make chicken feet, but big. There was a little library but I couldn’t find good images of chicken feet. So I thought, Well, the only thing I can do is make them the way I think they are. So I did that, and I was very happy with the result. A little later I was in Harvard in the Museum of Natural History, and I saw real bird feet and I thought, Jesus Christ this is so wrong. I came to the conclusion that, well, it doesn’t matter. People still know it; no one says it’s anatomically incorrect. Everyone thinks its right, your memory is more important than the real biological particulars.

LM: Tell me about your recent forays into drawing.

HvM: It is rather new. I think it took a while for me to be mentally strong enough to do it. I started a couple of years ago and now I can not stop it, once I started and was over it. It’s so base. It takes half an hour, an hour, maybe two hours. It helps me to make my sculptures. They are meant to be a separate thing, they are not meant to be sketches for a sculpture but since I do them they influence my sculpture so much and vice versa. I have to do my drawings, I love it.

LM: What’s your relationship with the animals you portray so frequently, such as birds and rabbits? What is their relation to humans?

HvM: I am not particularly interested in animals but rather how we look at animals. In earlier days and times, animals were on the farm and were there to do work. The bull had to work, the cow had to give milk and meat. They were respected as animals and there was a bond because you had to take care of your animals as assets to your livelihood. Nowadays, we interpret so much into animals. There is a company here, RocketDog, that makes gourmet food for dogs. A dog is like a coyote or wolf—what do they care about gourmet food that tastes like vegetables? We trick ourselves into thinking that they are human beings. That’s one side. On the other side, animals are mistreated in farming nowadays.

LM: Does your imagery have a goal as it relates to the viewer?

HvM: I would love to trigger several emotions. A lot of work is at first funny, some people start to laugh. “Look at this, look at the size of this…” and I hope that people think about it a little bit more, and say, “Ah, it is a little bit weird, and maybe it’s sad.” In the typical string of emotions, somebody told me once, ‘This one sculpture of yours, I can’t get it out of my head. I thought it was funny but it is actually terrible.’ And those emotions I love, where people think about it again and come to different conclusions. Sometimes you dream and they’re very clear, and you wake up and you can retell the dream. But often you reminisce about something, think of something that is just a little image deep in your head. That’s also what I want to reach, something there for 5 seconds and then gone. You can start to think of a story, I just give you hints.

TAFEL, 2001, Fiberglass, wood, paint. 3 noses: 85 x 45 x 55 cm, table: 70 x 80 x 120 cm

Van Meeuwen’s odd fragments and modifications impinge upon the sanctity and confines of the space. Using animals and humans to intermingle with physical walls, he incites curiosity beyond the room and challenges the viewer to link assumption and memory. The Landing (1996) depicts the oversized webbed feet and fluffy white underbelly of a pelican. The mind wanders into the bird’s realm, contemplating its reasons for being there and what the rest of the body looks like. Are the outstretched legs indicators of struggle or just a momentary loss of control? His sculptures have a dynamic freedom bound only by what we see and thusly imagine. Human distortions like Jumper (2008) relay similarly unstoppable trains of thought. A tiny man connected to a leg of more normalized human proportions is immediately baffling. Does his opposite leg defy the constraints of reality in a similar fashion, or is he forever damned to a pogo-hop? Van Meeuwen’s sculptures enflame the porous mind, tapping into the depths of the psyche despite their superficial simplicity.

Contradictions in form and function persist through van Meeuwen’s sketchy, gestural, stocky drawings. Transportation—inspired by his studio’s close proximity to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway—has been a prevalent theme in his drawings. In his hectic, woozy renderings of cars in motion or a congested highway on-ramp, the tension and aggression of his reality is inescapable. Untitled (2007) portrays two legs stunted by a maroon convertible wedged just above the ankles. Each component is worthless in lieu of the other: the car cannot drive perched above the ground, and the feet cannot take a stride without legs (or a brain, for that matter). Untitled (2008) portrays two standing individuals with large mirrors for heads. Literal mirrors provide an opportunity to reassess the external; figuratively, mirrors can be people or actions that enable one to reflect. Such foils hold considerable importance. These two figures, staring into each other’s blank void, punctuate an emptiness and disillusion to be found in reflection. Van Meeuwen’s drawings demonstrate the power of naïveté and the pitfall of submitting to an extreme.

Van Meeuwen stirs similar neuroses in the viewer through his manipulation of the human body. Tafel (2001) consists of three identical noses of approximately three feet tall by two feet wide projecting from three separate walls. A menacing cloud hovers in the room, fed by the suspicions of a witch-hunt or a haunted mansion susceptible to Scooby-Doo’s snooping. In the middle of the bleached room is a vacant, wooden, white table. The table is insignificant in the midst of the noses’ imposition, building an unwarranted tension. Black Holes (2005) emphasizes comparable feelings of paranoia. Icy-blue irises peer from beyond the walls of a corner, free from sockets in their rendering on canvas.A white table conjoined to a white chair is the focal point between the startling glares. Gazing upon the scene stirs discomfort in the viewer at the desk being rendered completely useless. In regressing to uncertainty, van Meeuwen challenges viewers to recall evolution out of childhood and gauge the tendencies that may remain.

Van Meeuwen’s clearest analysis of the human condition is in a series of partially transfigured humanoids. Sweet Potato (2007) presents a small man dressed like a Midwestern cow-herder in work boots and jean separates kneeling on an oversized sweet potato. Hunched over like a spewing drunkard, the man is victimized by the dense root vegetable as it absorbs his head and arms. Kartonkind (2004) portrays a similar “little man” settled on a raised board with a large cardboard box engulfing his upper body to the waist. Kartonkind’s oblivion is reduced to its most fundamental denominator, comparable to hiding in a closet or ignoring an incriminating email. These humanized sculptures are a caveman’s solution to obscured issues: so absurd, it’s funny; so desperate, it’s sad. Both relay feelings of isolation, of clouded judgment and introspection.

In sculpture and drawing, van Meeuwenennobles the escapism of daydreams and gives the viewer shameless excuses to introvert. Summoning adolescent relations and solutions combined with innate tension, he invites viewers to revert at a whim. His work is simultaneously inside and outside of itself, thoroughly incarcerated by the viewer’s assumptions based upon his suggestions. Endlessly open-ended, van Meeuwen’s imagery is a reminder that the crux of adolescence hasn’t quite dissipated. He embraces the juvenile curiosities and perceptual frenzy found in coming-of-age.

courtesy of Bomb Magazine

Dennis Hopper at MOCA LA

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 17:28:00 -0400

What happens when you move to Los Angeles as an 18 year-old and someone named James Dean introduces you to the Los Angeles art scene? You have a good chance of becoming an artist, and that’s what happened to Dennis Hopper. Best known as Hollywood’s bad boy, the actor and director from Kansas was one of the most important representatives of the Los Angeles avant-garde from the 1950s until he passed away in May.

Between ‘55 and ‘56, Hopper gained stardom as an actor, appearing in successful movies such as Rebel Without a Cause and Giant, both featuring James Dean. Coincidentally, Richard Hamilton was painting Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, initiating in London what would be become the new era of Pop Art and making the 1950s the ideal time to join the art world.

As soon I entered Hopper’s exhibition at The Geffen at MOCA, in the heart of Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo, two gigantic Pop Art artworks grabbed my attention, and I immediately forgot whatever I was thinking about before entering the museum: La Salsa Man and Mobil Man, two statues circa 2000. These 30 foot tall sculptures clearly show how Marcel Duchamp’s philosophy was deeply-rooted in his consciousness: in fact, they are a sort of homage to the concept of “ready-made,” as they are reproductions of sculptures he saw on the streets of LA.

La Salsa Man

The second thing I noticed was how Hopper struggled to find a way to represent himself on canvas. Drawing from studies from Polaroids and video, he perceived himself as a young fascinating movie star in Self Portrait (1966). Another self-portrait portrays Hopper as a goofy human-sized cowboy statue, with background made of plastic and fake cacti. Within a Man of Light, There Is Only Light; Within a Man of Darkness, There is Only Darkness is an impressive and creepy double self-portrait that somehow resembles the surrealistic touch of Magritte. These are followed by the video, Life After Death on Canvas, a projection of him performing a disturbing self-explosion, which represents his self-destructive drug habit during the 70s.

Within a Man of Light, There Is Only Light; Within a Man of Darkness, There is Only Darkness, courtesy of dianepernet.typepad.com

Back to history. In 1961, a fire in Bel Air destroyed all of Hopper’s paintings from his very first period: after that he began focusing more heavily on photography, perhaps because negatives can be carefully stored for future reprinting. This led to some of the most recognizable works of his career, such as the Biker Couple. Originally a photograph taken in 1961, Biker Couple was turned into a black and white painting on metal 40 years later. During his last years of activity, Hopper converted many of the photographs of his friends and heroes from the 1960s into paintings. His use of old artworks to create new and different ones is another reference to the genius of Duchamp: they both explored the idea of the piece of arts’ endless lifetime. The artist can make something that can always be revisited, re-made or changed, by himself or by someone else, even after decades or centuries. Although it’s not that plain at the first glance, there is a conceptual connection between Hoppers’ works and the incredible story of the eccentric french artist’s Large Glass or L.H.O.O.Q., the cheeky Duchamp’s Mona Lisa reinterpretation. Therefore, the wall-sized close-ups paintings of Andy Warhol, Rosenquist and Roy Lichtenstein can be considered a sort of homage to an artist that truly inspired the whole Pop Art movement.

Bikers Couple, courtesy of taschen.com

Photography is a big part of this show: almost all of Hopper’s pictures from the 60s are installed in the middle of the huge warehouse that hosts the Geffen at MOCA exhibition. The feeling is a bit like hanging out at Andy’s Factory with the enfant terribles of the New York art scene. A picture shows Oldenburg stamping the tongue of a laughing Rauschenberg; a sequence of photos shows a giant bottle of Coke laying in a bathroom and a floating clown in a living room; weird happenings, wild parties and crazy people that made history. That bright artistic period is immortalized in these frames.

During the 90s and the beginning of the new millennium, Hopper began exploring new territories. His travels to Morocco and Mexico to discover different cultural universes inspired his production of murals. This had a relevant impact on his late artistic production, when he started to investigate the “rural” soul of the American suburban areas, with works like Untitled #4: a huge free-standing fence covered behind a metallic net with a used tire laying underneath. The reinterpretation of mural art is reflected in a series of graffiti, exposed together with violent back and white scenes of documentaries and stills from his film Colors. Hopper’s graffiti production is a mix between his experiences abroad and the beloved LA peripheries, where he used to see mural paintings that he described as “Rothko kind of images that become these colors on colors on colors.”

This exhibition, held from July 11 to September 26, definitely deserves a look. Hopper contributed to the planning of his retrospective up until his final days, reinterpreting that crazy thing called Pop Art.

In these days, walking through the streets of Downtown Los Angeles, looking at the banners and at all the people going in and out of the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, it’s possible to feel the presence of Dennis Hopper and his huge impact on American culture. We remember him as the rebel sex-symbol from Easy Rider, and as the old, skinny and waken man that appeared with the lifetime friend Jack Nicholson on Hollywood Blvd in March of 2010 for his Walk of Fame Star ceremony, just a couple of months before he died of prostate cancer.

By Guido Ghedin