Andrew Max Modlin is a contemporary fine artist based in Los Angeles, where he lives and works in his studio in West Hollywood. After graduating with a BFA from UCLA – focused on painting – Modlin considered graduate school, but instead went into a design career. Previously, he has been best known for co-founding and doing all the design and branding for MedMen, and every aspect of the design and branding for Kreation Organic Juicery. For several years, Modlin has returned to painting full time. His special event solo exhibition, “Through the Brush,” opens Saturday, June 7 with an artist’s reception from 4-9PM. There will be light food, libations, and a DJ on hand. The show runs through June 21, when there will be a closing reception, also from 4-9PM. In between, the show will be open to the public from Wednesday – Saturday, 12P-6P, in addition to the opening and closing events. The paintings are both thoughtful and uplifting, a balm for these fractured times.
“Through the Brush,” curated by Peter Frank, focuses on Modlin’s large scale paintings, which are up to 60”x72”. The dreamlike landscapes, inspired by iPad drawings made on his extensive travels, are vistas bursting with color, lending a sense of being portals into the place itself. While large pieces are huge versions of his original drawings, there is no projection involved. Every work is completely hand created, as Modlin paints in layers, building up to the final image. Smaller works will also be on view. Locations from journeys to Iceland, Hawaii, Punta Mita / Puerto Vallarta, and Amsterdam – where the artist has spent extended amounts of time and considers a second home – will be displayed.
Curator and noted art critic Peter Frank writes, “As a neo-modernist, particularly one following in the representational – or at least pre-abstract – models of Matisse and Picasso, Modlin has dedicated himself to a manner of painting in which the qualities of the paint itself determine the impact of the picture on the eye. That is to say, Modlin’s renditions of natural and domestic sites do not pull us in with their subject matter so much as with their colors, their forms, their compositions, and their textures. We see the paint before we see what’s painted.”
Pictured: Tropical Drift, Punta Mita
