Monthly Archives: January 2015

The gallery is pleased to share ArtScene‘s most glowing review of Meghan Smtyhe‘s current exhibition – which remains on view through February 14th, 2015:

In “A Swollen Light Behind the Eye” Megan Smythe’s life-sized glazed sculptural forms take the tropes of the genre — the reclining nude, the portrait bust, entwined figures — and put them through the ringer. In “Sardoni” she drips vividly colored plasticine over a sculpted head, gleefully obfuscating facial features.  “A Light Culture” features a nude figure casually sitting atop a colorful glazed table; one arm rests on a knee, another arm is cut off at the shoulder, and extra hands and arms grip a large phallus or are jumbled at the figure’s side. Similarly, “Young Unbecoming” is all messy orgiastic drama, with mutilated and half-formed heads and body parts emerging from raw material. These grotesque but compelling works reveal an artist not only interested in universal themes of sex, violence, and creation, but also reveling in the sheer physicality of art-making. Body parts come in varying textures, sometimes smooth, rough, or cracked. The painted flesh is subtly multihued, with soft pink mottling the natural tones. Small ceramic objects are scattered next to the larger works, their lovingly handmade appearance rejecting labels of detritus. Smythe’s work equates the stimulating and visceral processes of art-making with those of the human body (Mark Moore Gallery, Culver City).

We congratulate Meghan on this lovely second review, and encourage you to see the show before it closes next month! For information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is pleased to announce Penelope Umbrico‘s inclusion in “Out There #2,” a group exhibition by Viewmaster Projects in Rotterdam. Says the venue:

The two-part exhibition Out There with venues in Maastricht (October 2014) and Rotterdam (February 2015), is showing present-day landscape images by contemporary artists who work with various media such as video, photography and ‘net art’. Distributed over two exhibition zones and two cities 50 artworks are put on display that are part of the 500-year-old tradition of landscape art and at the same time stretch and make current the traditional frames of meaning through new techniques and views.

On view through March, 8, 2015 – the exhibition also features work by an ambitious list of emerging and mid-career new media artists. Works will take place throughout the city – please click here for an interactive map detailing each project’s location.

The gallery is pleased to announce the Museum of Fine Arts: Houston‘s acquisition of “BMX Channel” (2013), by gallery artist Shaun Gladwell.

The MFAH is founded on one simple belief: Art is for everyone. The mission of the education department is to offer programs, tours, resources, and materials that teach and engage adults, children, educators, and students in the world of art. The goal is to create experiences that embrace the importance of art and the Museum; to position art and the Museum as a meaningful part of a well-rounded life; and to work with partners who support the community through shared values and interests. Since 1900, when the MFAH opened as an art education project in the public schools, the institution has maintained its mission of bringing art to people wherever they live, play, and learn. This commitment has established the MFAH as A Place for All People, an initiative that began in the 1990s with the support of the Wallace Foundation. It has amassed impressive collections focusing on Contemporary Art, International and Regional Art, and Photography.

Gladwell’s “BMX Channel” (2013) is a large-scale video projection. Set within a picturesque British seaside, this single-channel work demonstrates the artist’s signature uses of filmic devices such as slow motion and long pans to capture both a tightly choreographed and improvised performance. Described by the artist as “performance landscapes” Gladwell’s videos present a juxtaposition of culturally specific athleticism against a visually discursive environment.

Shaun Gladwell (b.1972, Australia) is based in Sydney and London. He completed Associate Research at Goldsmiths College, London in 2001 and has since undertaken numerous international residencies and commissions. He has exhibited prodigiously in Europe, North and South America, and in the Asia Pacific Region. Shaun Gladwell represented Australia at the 53rd Venice Biennale and traveled to Afghanistan as the official Australian War Artist in 2009. His work is held in significant public and private collections nationally and internationally, including: Wadsworth Atheneum, CT; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; the Progressive Art Collection, USA; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

We congratulate Shaun on this major milestone. For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Gallery artist Joshua Dildine will have new works featured in “Photo Shop,” a group exhibition at Claremont Graduate University curated by critic David Pagel. Dealing with the presence of the digital image in contemporary painting and sculpture, the show delves into many topical issues of art-making in a technology-driven era.

Opening tonight, January 20 from 6-9pm, this exhibition will remain on view through February 6, 2015 at the East & Peggy Phelps Galleries. The exhibition will feature art by Kutay Alkin, Polly Apfelbaum, Joshua Dildine, Katie Grinnan, Samuel Kyser, Damaris Rivera, and Evan Trine.

We congratulate Joshua on his inclusion in this show! For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is pleased to share Leah Ollman’s Los Angeles Times review of Meghan Smythe’s current solo exhibition, “A Swollen Light Behind The Eye.” Please find the article below in its entirety:

“Coupling” is the eye of the storm that is Meghan Smythe’s remarkable first solo show, at Mark Moore. The two slightly oversized right hands, sculpted in clay and sheathed in milky white glaze, rest on a pedestal, their gently cupped palms facing up. The thumb of one hand makes the barest contact with one of the fingers of the other. This is coupling of a spiritual as much as a physical sort.

Smythe is a sculptor of struggle. Primal forces contend in the work, as do various aesthetic and formal dispositions. The sobriety of the relic is countered by the whimsy of glass and resin follies. Figures pallid and cadaverous lie upon a surface oozing with puddles in the happy hues of Easter eggs. The friction between generation and decay, elegance and entropy, is what makes Smythe’s work so alive and also so tough to digest. It doesn’t go down easy, or at all. Stubborn, sensual, visceral — it sticks.

This exhibition remains on view through 6pm on Saturday, February 14th.

Smythe (b. 1984, Kingston, ON) received her MFA from the Alfred University School of Art and Design (NY). She is the winner of the 5790projects’ 2013 Moore Family Trust Prize, through which this exhibition was made possible. Her work has been shown at the Arizona State University Art Museum (AZ) and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto (ON). She was the Visiting Artist in Residence at California State University, Long Beach (CA) from 2012-2014, where she continues to teach Ceramic Arts. The artist lives and works in Long Beach, CA.

For more information about the exhibition artist, or available work, please feel free to contact the gallery, and we will accommodate your needs.

Mark Moore Gallery is proud to announce the Orange County Museum of Art‘s acquisition of David Maisel‘s “The Lake Project #22” (2001).

The Orange County Museum of Art is the premier visual arts organization in Orange County, California. Critically acclaimed exhibitions such as Birth of the Cool: Art, Design, and Culture at Midcentury, Mary Heilmann: To Be Someone, Picasso to Pollock: Modern Masterpieces from the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, andRichard Diebenkorn: The Ocean Park Series, draw more than 40,000 visitors annually. More than 15,000 children and adults participate in award-winning education programs. The museum’s collection comprises nearly 2,500 objects of modern and contemporary art, with a concentration on the art of California from the early 20th century to works by local, national, and international artists working today.

David Maisel is a visual artist based in San Francisco, CA. His large-scaled, surreal photographs chronicle the complex relationships between natural systems and human culture. His research-based practice has been the subject of five monographs, including “The Lake Project” (Nazraeli Press, 2004), “Oblivion” (Nazraeli Press, 2006), “Library of Dust” (Chronicle Books, 2008), “History’s Shadow” (Nazraeli Press, 2011), and “Black Maps: American Landscape and the Apocalyptic Sublime” (Steidl, 2013). Maisel’s images of radically altered terrain have transformed the practice of contemporary landscape photography. His hallucinatory worldview encompasses both stark documentary and tragic metaphor, and explores the relationship between nature and humanity today.

Maisel is the recipient of a 2011 grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, a 2008 Artist Residency from the Headlands Center for the Arts, and a 2007 Scholar/Artist Residency from the Getty Research Institute. Maisel has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Opsis Foundation. He was appointed a Trustee of the Headlands Center for the Arts in 2011. His work has been shown globally, including in such prestigious institutions as the California Museum of Photography (CA), Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (AZ), Portland Art Museum (OR), Fotografie Forum International (Frankfurt), American Academy (Rome), Musee des Beaux Artes (Bordeaux), and Seoul Arts Center (Seoul) among many other venues. Maisel’s works are in major public collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), the Getty Museum (CA), the National Gallery of Art (D.C.), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), among many other institutions. He received his BA from Princeton University, studied at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and received his MFA from California College of the Arts. The artist lives and works in Sausalito (CA).

We congratulate David on this milestone. For information about the arist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is proud to share critic Seth Hawkins’ extremely positive review of Kris Kuksi and Preston Daniels‘ recent solo exhibitions with the gallery. The review – as it appears in Artillery Magazine – is in full below:

Death, destruction, strife and pollution—the pairing of Kris Kuksi’s and Preston Daniels’ variations of dark sensationalism transport us to their version of artistically-mediated Armageddon, with each creating unique and hauntingly extravagant objects. Kuksi’s baroque wall sculptures are windows onto apocalyptic scenes, using a narrative style of assemblage to critique war, and portray devastation and the rebirth of society atop the ashes. Daniels’ installation complements nicely while embracing “darkness” in a much more tactile and literal way, allowing zero buffer between the viewer and the thick black ooze claustrophobically dripping from the vast geometric shapes that engulf the second gallery.

Truly a master appropriator, Kuksi builds vastly intricate artworks using thousands of repurposed, modified and carefully articulated miniatures—whether from statues, toys or any other object globally sourced that finds its way to his rural Kansas studio. In a world where we stroll past art mid-stride, Kuksi’s work begs to be examined and explored at length, with an almost infinite amount of information residing within the minutia. Embedding Renaissance-style nudes, military figures and classic mythology into his creations, Kuksi acknowledges that which has come before—he just distorts it in a way that complements his own twisted fantasies.

While sculptural, Kuksi’s work embodies the junction at which art, image and violent narrative collide. Something akin to the method of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment—the artworks have a centralized story, but also dozens of sub-themes and characters subtly interacting with each other. The unspeakable horrors depicted are hidden amongst the sheer volume of imagery. Kuksi’s massive wall sculpture, Leda and the Swan (2014), exemplifies this unique style. The life-sized figure of Leda lies beneath a tree, surrounded by hundreds of other vignettes. A miniature world of scaffolding, construction and chaos is being built atop and around her reclining body—giving insight to the fact that evil is consuming what once represented high beauty. Explore closely and groupings of tiny severed heads can even be found suspended amid the tree leaves shading her.

Compressed within the second gallery, Preston Daniels’ installation is an immersive and ominous environment. Jutting precariously from the walls and ceiling are minimalist forms of splendor—geometric structures containing fluorescent light fixtures. Covered in dark menacing goo, it is as if flawless works by Sol Lewitt and Dan Flavin have been encased in a millennia’s worth of grime, sludge and other effluences. Residing on the far wall is a cluster of text paintings, some legible and others with the lettering inverted. With phrases such as “WHEN YOU DIE WE WIN” and “ONE FOR YOU ONE FOR ME” (accompanied by imagery of two shotgun shells), the wall is an instruction manual for escaping this doomed ecosystem. 

Too often, contemporary sculpture leaves us utterly disappointed, but this exhibition provides a reprieve from the norm. While psychologically menacing, these artworks embrace the wonder of destruction and the potential carnage contained within the human condition—all the while somehow making it look sexy as hell. 

We congratulate both artists on this wonderful coverage, and thank Mr. Hawkins and Artillery for their support. For more information about the artists or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is pleased to share Art LTD‘s “Top 10 Exhibitions of 2014” for Los Angeles, which included the Clayton Brother‘s summer show, “Open to the Public.”  Says critic Shana Nys Dambrot, the brothers’ “mixed-media paintings and objects evoke the anthropological wonderland of a local thrift store,” a quality that inspired her to include their show on her annual list.

In celebration of the artist duo’s inclusion on this list, the gallery has highlighted several available works from “Open to the Public” on its Featured Works page. For more information about the artists or these works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

The gallery is proud to announce the Berkeley Art Museum‘s acquisition of works by gallery artists Andrew Schoultz and Penelope Umbrico.

The mission of the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is to inspire the imagination and ignite critical dialogue through art and film.The UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive is the visual arts center of the University of California, Berkeley. Through art and film programs, collections and research resources, it aspires to be locally connected and globally relevant, engaging audiences from the campus, community, and beyond. One of the largest university art museums in the United States, BAM/PFA opened the doors of its distinctive Modernist building on the south side of the UC Berkeley campus in 1970. BAM/PFA’s diverse exhibition programs and its collections of more than 16,000 objects and 14,000 films and videos are characterized by themes of artistic innovation, intellectual exploration, and social commentary, and reflect the central role of education in BAM/PFA’s mission.

The museum has added Schoultz’s “Black Flag” (2011) – pictured below – and Umbrico’s “Mountains, Moving #15” (2014) to its permanent collection.

We congratulate both Andrew and Penelope on this incredible milestone. For more information about either artist, or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Congratulations to gallery artist David Ryan – whose current solo exhibition is currently on view at MCQ Fine Art (Las Vegas, NV)- on his DailyServing review! Says writer Dawn-Michelle Baude:

David Ryan’s first solo exhibition in Las Vegas pushes into fresh terrain. In the new body of seventeen works on view at MCQ Fine Art, Ryan has reduced scale, from the bright and sassy wall constructions for which he is known to intriguing, intimate works the size of manila envelopes. His hard-edged abstraction has softened, unfurling into delicate, organic planes. Yet Ryan’s signature moves—the nervy lines, the accreted shapes, the obsession with nesting—are as strong as ever in these painting-and-sculpture combos.

The exhibition admirably enlarges Ryan’s practice away from Finish Fetish minimalism into more humanistic territory. In doing so, Ryan reveals a more emotional, less controlled side of his practice. The small-scale handmade paintings and stencils suggest that he has promising resources on which to draw.

The exhibition remains on view through January 30th. For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.