Monthly Archives: August 2015

The gallery is thrilled to announce that a major work by Christopher Russell, “Fox” (2013), has been acquired by the Museum of Art and History.

Lancaster Museum of Art and History (MOAH) houses a collection of post-war period and contemporary art in the areas of painting, sculpture, prints, drawings, photography, film, installations and new media. The museum also houses a collection of art pertaining to the Antelope Valley region. This art was created by artists that lived in, worked in or were inspired to create by the region. Rotating art exhibitions focus on contemporary artists, as well as the art housed within the current collection. In addition, the museum has a vast collection of Native American, historic artifacts and geologic specimens pertaining primarily to the Antelope Valley and its surrounding areas. Many of these items will be on permanent display within the museum, while others make up some of the history themed rotating exhibits showcased throughout the year.

Dealing less with the supernatural than the psychosomatic, Christopher Russell rouses ghosts. Within his scratched photographs, fractured glass panes, and hazy metallic paints, there are haunting recollections – the kind of outlier memories that plague our psyche well after childhood. Through a purposefully repressive fog, we habitually revisit the monsters of our innermost mentality, and find ourselves the protagonist of a lifelong plight – a cinematic tale evocatively illustrated by Russell’s eerie ships and spectral trees. Like a folkloric odyssey into a cognitive web, his mixed-media works and installations traipse through places of fragility and wistfulness; evidence of the divine and unsettling encounters inherent to our complex mortality.

Russell (b. 1974) received his M.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design (CA). In 2009, he produced a solo exhibition at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, CA). He has also been featured in group exhibitions at the Tokyo Institute of Photography (Japan), The Norton Museum (West Palm Beach, FL), Armory Center for the Arts (Los Angeles, CA), White Columns (New York, NY) De Appel Arts Center (Netherlands) Oakland Museum (Oakland, CA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), among others. He has published numerous critical articles in addition to being a featured subject of positive review by the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Huffington Post, Artillery, Frieze, and ArtForum, among others. Russell is also known for his ‘zine Bedwetter. His first novel is Sniper, and other books include Budget Decadence (2nd Cannons Publications), Pattern Book (Insert Blanc Press) and Landscape (Kolapsomal Press)–which was included in Martin Parr’s The Photobook: A History Volume III (Phaidon). His work is included in the collections of numerous public institutions including the Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art – University of Oregon, Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Hammer Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography, to name a few.

Fox, 2013 / Ultrachrome print scratched with a razor / 22 x 34 inches

For more information about the artist or available work, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Gallery artist Penelope Umbrico is featured in Photograph Magazine this month. In the article, Umbrico is asked to talk about her work–and specific pieces, in her own words. She begins with:

I’ve been working with images from the New York Public Library picture collection on and off for the past 20 years. Searching this physical collection today is a very different exercise than it was when I started: there were few other ways to source images then. Now, the act of traveling to the library, slowly working through the paper folders, and choosing from this limited stock seems absurd, but it asks one to commit to an image and consider its physicality in a way that is impossible online. 

Read the rest of the article here.

The gallery is pleased to share David Pagel’s Los Angeles Times review of Tim Bavington’s current solo exhibition, “Stroll On.” Please find the article below in its entirety:

Fifteen years ago, when Tim Bavington started exhibiting his blurry stripe paintings, he packed loads of visual dissonance — and jolts of emotional turbulence — into their fuzzy bands of synthetic color by using an airbrush to make hard-edged compositions.

His choice of tools was akin to a carpenter using a wrench to do a hammer’s job. The main difference was that Bavington’s hazy stripe paintings, all based on rock songs, did not make a mess of the job. They looked better and sexier and more attuned to the times than anything else out there.

At Mark Moore Gallery, the England-born, Las Vegas-based artist has again shuffled the deck of our expectations by taking a power-sander to the beautifully atmospheric surfaces of his canvases. This roughs up the supple surfaces of his works. But rather than eliminating subtlety — and the sophistication that goes with it — the sander allows Bavington to create another kind of delicacy: a nuanced softness that is as surprising today as his airbrushed stripe paintings were 15 years ago.

It’s as if Bavington’s rock ’n’ roll paintings have gone acoustic. Their electrifying energy and eye-popping, hip-shaking, mind-blowing color-combinations have given way to a gentler — but no less resonant — approach. The colors are softer, less sizzling, more tactile in their sensuality. The weave of the canvases, more visible than ever, fractures each band into innumerable flecks. Their appearance comes across as the visual version of static.

The two square paintings, based on album covers from the 1980s, include those ghostly circles that eventually form on well-used LPs. In Bavington’s hands, this wear-and-tear raises questions about painting’s relationship to time, particularly art’s power to defy history. Put simply, you can buy a used album. But we do not talk about used music. We may get tired of a song. It may be boring, stale and clichéd. But even bad ones live only in the moment they are played. Bavington’s power-sanded canvases make the same claim, and more, for painting. We do not talk about used paintings. Drive a new car off the lot and you know what happens to its value. But great paintings do the opposite. The more they get used, the more vital they become.

That time-defying, Dorian Gray newness belongs to the art, not to viewers. Like Oscar Wilde, Bavington turns the tables to make us see what that means.

This exhibition remains on view through 6pm on Saturday, August 29, 2015. To watch a recent video interview with the artist, click here.

Tim Bavington (b. 1966, England) received his BFA from the Art Center (CA) before making the permanent move to Las Vegas, where he completed his MFA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (NV). His work is included in the public collections of Fredrick R. Weisman Collection (CA),Honolulu Art Museum (HI), Albright-Knox Art Gallery (NY), Creative Artists Agency (CA), Joslyn Art Museum (NE), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), Portland Art Museum (OR), United Talent Agency (CA), Vivendi Universal (CA), Palm Springs Art Museum (CA), Denver Art Museum (CO), The Museum of Modern Art (NY), Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Utah State University (UT) and the McNay Art Museum (TX). He has exhibited at LeeAhn Gallery (Daegu), Jack Shainman Gallery (NY), Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard (Paris), Space Gallery (London), Museum of Fine Arts (MA), Laguna Art Museum (CA), Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Buenos Aires, and the Texas Fine Arts Center (TX) among others.

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

Get Happy, 2009-2015 / synthetic polymer on canvas / 36 x 36 inches

The gallery is pleased to announce the Crocker Art Museum‘s acquisition of Jeffry Mitchell‘s work, “Jug With Flowers and Bears” (2012), for its permanent collection.

The first public art museum founded in the Western United States, the Crocker Art Museum was established in 1885 and is now one of the leading art museums in California. The Crocker serves as the primary regional resource for the study and appreciation of fine art. The Museum offers a diverse spectrum of special exhibitions and programs to complement its collections of Californian art, works on paper, European art, international ceramics, photography, Asian art, and African and Oceanic art. The Crocker Art Museum is the only museum in the Sacramento region accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), a recognition given to less than 800 of the nation’s 17,500 museums. AAM accreditation certifies that a museum operates according to standards set forth by the museum profession, manages its collections responsibly, and provides quality service to the public.

Identifying himself as a “gay folk artist,” Jeffry Mitchell creates work that deals largely with dualities. Using a variety of materials and methods, including ceramics, printmaking, and drawing, Mitchell manages to juxtapose seemingly disparate ideas into beautiful, fragile, and startling works. Using sweet, furry animals and soft, pastel colors, Mitchell transforms kitsch subject matter into a study of complex human experiences, including death, sex, religion, and loss. His work, at times appearing clumsy and hand-wrought, remains approachable and innocent, engaging viewers with his child-like curiosity and ungainly re-creations of recognized subjects. While highly sophisticated in his technique, Mitchell chooses to display vulnerability in his work, allowing both himself and his viewers to negotiate frightening realities by couching them in the comfort of the familiar and a faith in innocence. His work is suffused with a desire to welcome, accept, and even love the disconcerting and flawed aspects of ourselves and others.

For more information about the artist or available work, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Congratulations to Allison Schulnik for being included in the recent New York Times article, “Unpacking and Decoding the World of Animation.”

The article highlights the works in the group show Screen Play: Life in an Animated World, currently on view at Albright-Knox Art Gallery through September 13th.

To read the article, click here.

For more information about the artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.