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Byline: Emily Nimptsch
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Anat Ebgi:
Ethan Cook
Currently on display at Culver City’s Anat Ebgi gallery are the familiar, yet intriguing color field paintings of Texas-born, New York-based mixed-media artist Ethan Cook. Taking inspiration from abstract painters such as Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin, here Cook delves into the notion of copying itself. Shakespeare examines the fine line between simulation and the original with his seven hand-woven cloth canvases featuring violet and vermilion squares and rectangles that imperfectly dissect the picture plane. Each canvas is divided between bold and muted hues intertwined in harmony like Yin and Yang or puzzle pieces—elements that, when combined, create something complete and timeless.
Ethan Cook, Untitled (2016), courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Cook’s choice of using painting to illustrate his point is an interesting one as the medium can be seen as the traditional embodiment of the “original” and “one-of-a-kind.” The artist’s companion exhibition text offers this tantalizing quote to posit meaning regarding Shakespeare’s central notion of copying, “All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare are William Shakespeare.” By symbolically copying the drawn lines of past artists, he is asserting and questioning his place among them. Perhaps Cook is reminding us that no artist lives in a bubble, free of outside influence. This sentiment is also reminiscent of a famed Pablo Picasso quotation, “Good artists copy, great artists steal.”
Ethan Cook, Untitled (2016), courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Cook is known for making conceptually probing work, such as fiberglass relief paintings depicting “cutesy” images of children, teddy bears, cherubs, and kittens as well as his circa 17th century Dutch still-life inspired paintings featuring opulent displays of luscious fruit and livestock lifelessly splayed over a tabletop. Cook’s work has previously been shown at New York’s Chelsea Art Museum and Sadie Coles Gallery in London; however, Shakespeare is his first solo exhibition at Anat Ebgi and his introduction to a broader West Coast audience. Upon first glance, Cook’s abstract canvases may seem neutral and derivative, but are actually teeming with well-constructed ideas regarding artistic credit and the image itself.
Ethan Cook, Untitled (2016), courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Ethan Cook, “Shakespeare,” November 5 — December 17th, 2016 at Anat Ebgi Gallery, 2660 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90034, anatebgi.com
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Various Small Fires:
Jeff Zilm
Walking down the lengthy corridor from the street to Hollywood’s Various Small Fires Gallery for the opening reception of mixed media artist Jeff Zilm’s latest exhibition, “Relics of the Epoch,” a slightly alienating, yet familiar droning sound cascades down the hallway. Piquing one’s interest, it pulls the visitor towards the gallery’s entrance. It is there that one finds three readymade metal statues. Functioning as antennae, they transmit these tones featuring distorted samples of a late 1980s film soundtrack.
Jeff Zilm, Antennae, installation view, 2016, courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires. This theme of revisiting and editing the past continues inside the gallery itself. Zilm’s hypnotic, multilayered “emulated paintings” are actually altered digital files recovered from the artist’s Macintosh computer from the early 1990s. Sometimes the ghostly negative of the original image can be spotted in the work, and sometimes only metallic, chain link fence patterns are present. Like the hazy droning sound outside, these patterns might represent the fuzziness of memory or how we try to alter and erase parts of our histories.
Jeff Zilm, Untitled, 2016, courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires. These patterns are disorienting and seem to shift before one’s very eyes like an optical illusion. One starts to see shapes and images that may not really be there. Zilm created this intriguing effect using a large, technologically advanced UV printer, but the emotional heart of this show examines what it means to be obsolete. He uses these old computer programs, antennae, and the traditional canvas to question whether his memories themselves are outdated.
Jeff Zilm, Untitled, 2016, courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires. This isn’t the first time the Texas-based artist has used older technology in his work. In his most recent project, known as the “film painting” series, he altered black and white film reels. “Relics of the Epoch,” Zilm’s Los Angeles debut and his first show with Various Small Fires goes further, bringing in an auditory component to create a potent emotional experience.
Jeff Zilm, Untitled, 2016, courtesy of the artist and Various Small Fires. Jeff Zilm, “Relics of the Epoch,” September 17 – October 22, 2016 at Various Small Fires, 812 North Highland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90038. www.vsf.la
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Tom Mueske
Since graduating from the San Francisco Institute of the Arts in 2007, Mueske has been consistently making noteworthy artwork in ink. The artist has recently expanded his repertoire to include works in spray paint and enamel. “Tom Mueske: Recent Work” is on view now at Sonce Alexander Gallery. All of Mueske’s works are greatly influenced by the spontaneous gestures made famous by the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s. These uncontrolled movements of the artist’s hand signal back to Greenbergian Modernism. But instead of the using oil paint, Mueske chooses more contemporary media. He mimics and illustrates the AbEx gestures with updated materials.
Tom Mueske, Warped I & II , 2014. Courtesy: Sonce Alexander Gallery Like the Modernists, Mueske espouses an imperfect aesthetic, one that looks as though it was truly made by human hands. The artist explains in the gallery’s press release, “I attempt to perform gestures that are sincere and genuine. I often make marks with my wrong hand or behind my back. This removes any expectations of what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ that I bring to the work.” This insistence upon mark-making without judgment recalls the Surrealists’ penchant for automatic drawing as a way of getting at the subconscious mind. Drawing in this manner is an extremely vulnerable act as so-called “mistakes” are ubiquitous.
His series of eight smaller works “Untitled Installation” (2009) perfectly illustrate Mueske’s predilection for unrestrained drawing. He creates a symphony of chaotic, undulating and intermingling circles and lines that together create unexpected rhythm and beauty. He is begging the question—can we create something beautiful by accident? And what happens when we let go of our filters and expectations?
Tom Mueske, Untitled Installation, 2009. Courtesy: Sonce Alexander Gallery The signature piece of this collection is no doubt a large quilt-like arrangement of bright vertical and horizontal lines intermixed with a sprinkling of darker ones (all drawn with spray paint). In Grid (2014), its lines are not perfect nor are they meant to be. The grid structure of the image harkens back to the grids of Mondrian and Malevich, but here, Mueske’s neon lines extend into the viewer’s space and seem to shift and vibrate before your very eyes. Mueske’s canvas is living and breathing.
Tom Mueske, Grid, 2014. Courtesy: Sonce Alexander Gallery Mueske builds upon and updates the megalithic and sometimes static tradition of Modernism. By using bold and bright colors created with everyday materials, he enriches and makes his own mark upon this aesthetic that has been handed down to him from the artistic greats. Mueske seems to do the impossible in making something so established as Abstract Expressionism feel fresh and original.
Tom Mueske, Scroll, 2014. Courtesy: Sonce Alexander Gallery 
Tom Mueske, Untitled (Enamels), 2014. Courtesy: Sonce Alexander Gallery See “Tom Mueske: Recent Works”
through August 14, 2014Sonce Alexander Gallery
2673 South La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
