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Byline: Eve Wood
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Sean Duffy
In much the same way Chris Burden imbues his visual vernacular with his own brand of personal/social provocation, Sean Duffy, in his newest exhibition, aptly titled “Paintings,” at Susanne Vielmetter, shatters the expectation of the pristine sacred surface, electing instead to explode his images out of themselves and into the world. The manner in which these paintings were created alludes to violence without being violent. Despite the use of a gun to scar the surface of the canvas, Duffy’s paintings rely more steadfastly on the metaphor of action as a means of transformation and perhaps even redemption.
That Duffy’s paintings represent traces of human engagement, and the need for mark-making in whatever way that might occur, is undeniable. In Teared Up for example (all works 2014), Duffy bisects the singularly luminous peacock blue picture plane with a vertically incised line of BB gun shots, wherein the points of entry comprise a new order even as they destroy the calm tranquility of the canvas as a whole. Because we can so clearly delineate the space of the painted surface from the raw canvas beneath it, the work transforms beyond its own painterly aesthetic to become another kind of object altogether, one that requires our full attention.
Sean Duffy, “If You Can’t Beat ‘Em, Bite ‘Em, 2014. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer. This is not altogether unfamiliar territory as artists like Lucio Fontana and Alberto Burri defined an entire generation through the act of negation, i.e. excavating the canvas to the point where parts of it shatter, burn and even disappear; like Fontana and Burri, and Burden too perhaps, Duffy also formulates the endless process by which an artist creates anything as simultaneously creative and destructive. Burden used firearms as a tool toward a kind of social interplay between artist and viewer. Duffy uses the gun to define, or even in some ways to defend his own existence in much the same way someone might carve their name into the trunk of an old tree.
Sean Duffy, “Big Blue Tear”, 2014. Courtesy of Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects; Photo credit: Robert Wedemeyer. Duffy presents us with two kinds of demarcation. In the first, color is used as an aggressive tool, the raw canvas seemingly torn apart by the force and intensity of the color itself, whereas with the second group of paintings, the calming colored surface of the canvas is acted upon by the force and velocity of the gunshots, which disrupt the color and expose the raw canvas beneath. Either way, the surface is despoiled and rebuilt. The other notable difference is the titling of the two different types of work. Raw canvas works have titles that refer to specific birds like Rufous and Western Scrub Jay. Rufous in particular reads like a roadmap for some dispossessed and raging hummingbird. Birds are quite antagonistic and highly territorial, and these paintings, which all use some sort of grid, seem to suggest a territorial mapping of space and time.
Duffy wants us as viewers to peer beyond the artifice and the glossy surface, to engage with the object itself, simultaneously blown apart yet strangely held together by the very thing that destroys it as in the magical Big Blue Tear where small BB pellets can be seen glistening under the harsh gallery lights, buried deep inside the incised wound of the canvas.
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Expressionism in Germany and France: From Van Gogh to Kandinsky
What can I say that hasn’t already been said about two of the greatest artists in history, except that Van Gogh and Kandinsky, not to mention other lesser known expressionists like Gabrielle Münter, and Franz Marc helped to shape the way we look at the world today. These are paintings that leave a tangible mark on the brain. They creep up on you. They insinuate and ultimately express the strange, often hidden malefactions of the human condition. Works like Van Gogh’s “Pollard Willows at Sunset (Saules au coucher du soleil)” 1888 practically suck the air right out of your lungs and leave you gasping, yet somehow you can’t stop staring.
LACMA
5905 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Ends Sept. 14, 2014 -
Draftpunk
I overheard a student of mine say “Nobody uses pencils anymore. They are just so old school.” This made me very sad until I saw Kio Griffith’s recent curatorial effort, “Draftpunk” at Autonomie Projects. I was reminded that not only is the pencil very much alive, but is much revered. Drawing has been an essential practice for artists for centuries, yet it often gets the shorter end of the proverbial “art world stick” in comparison to painting. This exhibition demonstrates drawing is not a means to an end but the end itself. Marie Thibeault’s tree drawings in particular stand as visual testaments of mark-making at its best.
Autonomie Projects
4742 West Washington Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016 -
John Altoon
Regarding John Altoon—all I can say is GO TO LACMA NOW and see Altoon’s stunning, inspiring first major retrospective. Altoon was a visionary, but more that perhaps, he was deeply committed to the process of painting and willing to see where that journey took him. Made up of some 70 works, Altoon’s visual language is literally like no other and works like Untitled, 1964 combine both abstraction and figuration in a manner that utilizes the negative space as though it were a character in a play that is unfolding before your eyes. Altoon is also not afraid of humor or to venture a political opinion in his work and this is so refreshing. The young people coming out of graduate art programs all around the country could learn a thing or two from this master.
LACMA
John Altoon
5905 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Ends Sept. 14, 2014 -
Steve McQueen
As a viewer, one must “bear witness” to Steve McQueen’s artwork, which constitutes a totally awe inspiring engaging sensory experience. McQueen’s 1998 video installation titled Drumroll, in combination with his series of 56 photographs of gutters and dams in and around Paris, describe a uniquely human journey wherein no verifiable humans are actually present. We may as viewers encounter a random stray thigh or a hand perhaps, but McQueen’s self-professed auditory pilgrimage is not about human presence or communication, but about sensory contact. McQueen utilizes sound and movement as the main characters in a nonstop “drumroll” down the busy streets of Manhattan—a ride you don’t want to miss.
MOCA PACIFIC DESIGN CENTER
Steve McQueen: Drumroll
8687 MELROSE AVENUE,
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA 90069
Ends Sept. 21, 2014 -
Mike Kelley
Mike Kelley was a ruthless investigator, of everything from Mother Mary, to rainbow afro wigs to stuffed toys to the complex mechanism, which was his own mind. The works that comprise this retrospective are alternately humorous and aggressive, quietly lurking and riotously showboating, but perhaps the single consistency within the exhibition is Kelley’s uncanny ability to bear witness to the entirety of the world itself, and to do this while simultaneously looking inward – not for an “answer,” but for some overarching question that might instigate, or inspire, or simply burn the whole place down. This show is a an absolute must see and closes on July 28.
MOCA
Mike Kelley
250 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012
Through July 28, 2014 -
Nathan Mabry at Cherry And Martin
Nathan Mabry
I can think of nothing as “fiercely alluring” (literally) as the open-mouthed skull of a T-Rex, and one with a luscious bronze patina to boot! Nathan Mabry delivers another provocative and mythologically charged visual opus at the Cherry Martin Gallery. Working in a variety of materials including Cor-ten steel, aluminum and bronze, Mabry continues his exegesis into ancient human signs and symbols, including the function of memory, time and the very notion of creation itself. Mabry translations are open-ended, much like the T-Rex’s gaping mandible, and if you look closely, you might fall in, or better yet, get lost there.
–Eve Wood
Cherry And Martin
Nathan Mabry
GoodGod
2712 S. La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, California
90034
May 3 – June 28, 2014 -
Martin Mull. No, Seriously.
Martin Mull has certainly earned his place in the canon of exceptional narrative painters, those for whom painting is a delicate and complicated process by which the artist quantifies his/her relationship to the world around them. Mull’s assessments are usually dark, even sinister at times, and this darkness derives from a seemingly inherent flaw in our humanity, as if the figures in Mull’s universe, poised on the brink of personal reflection and faced with the invidious task of self assessment, would suddenly and inexplicably vanish into thin air in a puff of smoke. As with other narrative painters, including Edward Hopper or even John Currin, Mull is less interested in our human failings and much more concerned with the choices we make that determine our providence, collective or otherwise.
Martin Mull, Carpe Diem, 2007 A man of many singular talents, Mull is probably best known for his comedic antics on the 1977 television show Fernwood Tonight, where he played a zany talk show host named Barth Gimble. Unlike some celebrity artists who “take up” painting as a weekend hobby, Mull has a fierce and uncompromising discipline that spans some 30 years, beginning with a solo show in 1980 at the Molly Barnes Gallery. Since that time, Mull has exhibited widely in Los Angeles and has been represented by many first rate galleries including Patricia Faure and presently Samuel Freeman. In 2006 Mull had a retrospective at the Las Vegas Museum of Art that demonstrated as never before the artist’s far-reaching human concerns. At the core of Mull’s practice is a deeply rooted compassion for what many a writer has termed the “ineluctable human condition,” and what happens when we stand at odds with our own complicated nature. In Tea Party (2010) for example, a firing squad of 1950’s middle-America women, both young and old, stand, pistols raised, to face an unseen “enemy.” This image captures the Cold War terror that engulfed this country during the 1950s—a terror that was largely fueled and sustained by the government.
Martin Mull, The Luck of the Draw, 2007 In a lot of his images, Mull expresses an inherent mistrust of the “blind faith” mentality that many Americans ascribe to even today, be it religious fervor, or the simple inability to question authority on any level. In Carpe Diem (2007) a businessman walks directly into what appears to be a nuclear detonation. He is the physical embodiment of the American Dream, though rarely does that “dream” take into consideration our human predilection toward violence. We are, after all, animals, and no one understands the tension between instinct and reason better than Mull, who, rather than capitalize on the obvious cruelty, focuses his attention instead on the more subtle inconsistencies that make up any life. Somewhere in the world a person is experiencing a perfect moment of sustained happiness even as the bomb goes off. Beauty exists in the face of ugliness, or despite it.
Images courtesy Samuel Freeman gallery
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John Mills At Rosamund Felsen Gallery
John Mills
Googlehorn, 2014
John Mills’ recent exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery is compositionally complex and visually challenging. As the title suggests, High On Signs represents the artist’s love affair with line and shape and more importantly perhaps, the iconographic references that these signs suggests. “Googlehorn” for example has an open-hearted dizziness about it that is at once electrifying the quietly demure as though the strangely cock-eyed line drawing were whispering for us to come closer. Mills hand is effortless and he achieves a gracefullness of line and purpose that is positively lovely.
–Eve Wood
Rosamund Felsen Gallery
John Mills
High On Signs
2525 Michigan Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
90034
June 7 – July 5, 2014 -
John Tottenham at Maloney Fine Art
John Tottenham
The Indifferent Sublime, 2014
John Tottenham, who regularly graces Artillery’s pages with his near orgasmic wit and verbal subterfuge, is a fantastic artist, though in typical self-deprecating style, he might in fact tell you otherwise. “The Indifferent Sublime” is, well, truly sublime, especially the strangely unpopulated drawings of what appear to be empty mining towns in the old west punctuated by typical Tottenham aphorisms like “failure is definitely an option,” and “kill me with kindness, then just kill me.” Despite their sarcasm, and perhaps indirect opposition to Tottenham’s intentions, these drawings are downright heartbreaking ( and I mean that in the very best sense of the word!)
–Eve Wood
Maloney Fine Art
John Tottenham:
“The Indifferent Sublime”
2680 South La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
June 14 – July 3, 2014 -
Koi No Yokan II at 101 Exhibit
Koi No Yokan II
Tanya Batura, Untitled, 2014
Imagine meeting someone, and knowing that you will one day fall madly in love with that person, and you have mastered the Japanese concept of Koi No Yokan. Love is not immediately activated, as in the American sense of “love at first sight,” but becomes a brooding and inevitable perception. 101 Exhibit gives us a group show of powerful symbolism by five women, each of whom translate the concept of future love in various terms—some more suggestively sinister than others. For example, Tanya Batura’s starkly meditative collective of bloodshot eyes demonstrates a deeply primal introspection that, like all great art, defies explanation.
–Eve Wood
101 Exhibit
Koi No Yokan II
6205 Santa Monica Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90038
June 7 – July 26, 2014 -
Luke Butler at Charlie James Gallery
Luke Butler
The End, XIX, 2014
I can see Luke Butler hanging out with Montgomery Clift and Liz Taylor, sipping daiquiris by the lake-house with not a care in the world, but then all great movies must come to “an end.” Butler specializes in these two powerfully evocative little words having dedicated the lion’s share of his exhibition at the Charlie James Gallery to the ever-familiar and all-too-satisfying denouement. For Butler, the televised image reads like an old friend, or even more specifically here in the second part of his exhibition, a poignant “trekkian instant” when good old Mr. Spock might suddenly turn around and say “what a curious metaphor indeed.”
–Eve Wood
Charlie James Gallery
Luke Butler
In Color And Black And White
969 Chung King Rd,
Los Angeles, CA 90012
May 31 – July 19, 2014 -
Materially Defined at CMay Gallery
Materially Defined
Chris Pate, Feast (3)
All art has corporeal form, and must be “made” of something, and in the case of “Materially Defined,” at CMay Gallery, the literal materials themselves dictate the greater metaphorical meaning of the individual works in the exhibition. Macha Suzuki, Devon Tsuno and Chris Pate each approach content through a rigorous and unconventional utilization of materials. For example, Chris Pate’s “Feast (3),” an archival inkjet collage made with found fabric and thread on burlap, stands not only as a complicated investigation into form, but the materials echo the broader contextual meaning of the work. These open-mouthed boys could be poster children for a new hybridized generation where anything goes and everything is suspect.
–Eve Wood
CMay Gallery
Materially Defined
8687 Melrose Ave, Space B226
West Hollywood, CA 90069
May 23 – June 11, 2014 -
Rachel Kastor: Ambitious Implements
Rachel Kastor: Ambitious Implements
Hatching, 2014
Rachel Kaster creates startlingly effective visual conversations between seemingly disparate objects including glass, found wood and bronze. Many of Kastor’s visual relationships depend on tangible visceral associations; glass is so fragile, yet within this fragility is the possibility of violence, beautiful and seductive as it is. For example, drawing from the natural world as a source of inspiration and imagination, Kaster juxtaposes the warmth and familiarity of natural wood with the strangely disconcerting image of a glass axe. Kastor’s objects function in much the same way a lyrical poem might, unexpectedly shifting, yet ultimately remaining true to an essential and undeniable human impulse.
–Eve Wood
Gallery 825
Rachel Kastor
Ambitious Implements
825 N La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90069
April 26 – May 23, 2014 -
Rachel Lauren Kaster at Gallery 825
Rachel Lauren Kaster
Hatching, 2014
Rachel Kaster creates startlingly effective visual conversations between seemingly disparate objects including glass, found wood and bronze. Many of Kaster’s visual relationships depend on tangible visceral associations; glass is so fragile, yet within this fragility is the possibility of violence, beautiful and seductive as it is. For example, drawing from the natural world as a source of inspiration and imagination, Kaster juxtaposes the warmth and familiarity of natural wood with the strangely disconcerting image of a glass axe. Kaster’s objects function in much the same way a lyrical poem might, unexpectedly shifting, yet ultimately remaining true to an essential and undeniable human impulse.
–Eve Wood
Gallery 825
Rachel Kaster
Ambitious Implements
825 N La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90069
April 26 – May 23, 2014 -
Night Terrors And Day Dreams at The Loft at Liz’s
Night Terrors And Day Dreams
Gary Brewer, Circadian Revolution, 2014
Edgar Allen Poe, the undisputed master of darkness once said, “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night,” suggesting that the light can be a necessary benediction just as the dark holds its own rich splendor. Renee A. Fox has curated a powerhouse group of artists who celebrate the light even as they relish the darkness. Highlights include Gary Brewer’s incredible watercolors of what appear to be oddly dimorphic sea anemones that might have sprung fully formed and writhing from the imagination of H.G. Wells.
–Eve Wood
The Loft At Liz’s
Night Terrors And Day Dreams
453 S. La Brea Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
May 17 – June 21, 2014
