Join us in Long Beach to see this exhibition of abstract works by Southern California artists Chris Collins and Josh Friedman.
September 18 – October 9, 2021
Gallery Hours: Saturdays 12 – 5pm during the show
or book a FREE appointment on Friday and Sunday by emailing fluxartspace@gmail.com
Artists’ Reception: Sunday, September 19, 3-5 pm
(beverages only, outdoors, attendance is limited)
Both artists work with a variety of artforms, including sculpture and installation. This exhibition primarily focuses on their two-dimensional works. These artists make art in different ways, for different reasons, but they both bring forth a sense of the sublime in humble materials and simple marks. Their works reveal the passage of time and directly acknowledge disintegration. Both collaborate with chance and process.
Chris Collins has a subtle touch. He often works with the remnants of consumerism – objects found on the streets of Los Angeles. He collaborates with them, using printmaking and casting. Rather than emphasizing his own mark making, he lets the objects speak for themselves. He notices the gestures on the surfaces and shapes of these objects and brings them forth in the work. The results become a record of the artist’s engagement with his surroundings and the evidence of unseen events—the persistent process of weathering, an object deliberately torn and discarded, a package crushed in the street under the tire of a car. All works in the show by Chris Collins are courtesy of Louis Stern Fine Arts.
Gestural marks are central to Josh Friedman’s works as well, but there is more direct evidence of the artist’s hand in the work. His energetic accumulations of marks are the result of both spontaneity and purposefulness. The free liquidity of ink is counterbalanced with the paste-like quality of thicker paint and the simultaneously warm-looking and discomforting burn holes in paper. With the burned-paper works, the artist speaks to the fragility inherent in life. Each of the individual holes contributes to the overall image, while destroying the paper on which it’s made.
About Chris Collins:
Chris Collins is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Born and raised in Alabama, he received a BFA in painting from the University of Montevallo and an MFA from Memphis College of Art. After graduate school, Chris moved West to Santa Fe, New Mexico to work at Shidoni Foundry. Over the next decade he worked making sculpture as a foundry artisan for various artists and designers, as well as utilizing foundry processes in his own works. He has actively shown work regionally and nationally, and operated an art gallery, Santa Fe Collective, with his wife and partner Jennifer Joseph. Chris has served as contributing faculty at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design and currently teaches metal casting at Saddleback College in Mission Viejo, CA. For more, see http://www.chriscollinssculpture.com/ and Instagram@chriscollinssculpture .
About Josh Friedman:
Josh Friedman holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His works on paper and sculptures have been included in gallery and museum exhibitions in Italy, Korea, Japan, the United States, and Thailand. His work has also been written about in Blaze: Discourse on Art, Women, and Feminism, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Friedman maintains his creative practice in Long Beach and teaches in Los Angeles, California. For more, see https://www.joshfriedmanart.com/ and Instagram @joshfriedmanart .