Monthly Archives: October 2020

Mark Moore Fine Art is proud to present “Selected Landscapes from Black Is The Day, Black Is The Night“ by AMY ELKINS

VIEW THIS EXHIBITION NOW AT: https://bit.ly/2FcqLjm

Amy Elkins (b. 1979 Venice, CA) is a photographer currently based in the Greater Los Angeles area.  She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally, including at The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA; Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria; the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; North Carolina Museum of Art; Light Work Gallery in Syracuse, Aperture Gallery and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, De Soto Gallery in Los Angeles, the Houston Center for Photography in Houston, TX among others. 

Elkins has been awarded The Lightwork Artist-in-Residence in Syracuse, NY in 2011, the Villa Waldberta International Artist-in-Residence in Munich, Germany in 2012, the Aperture Prize and the Latitude Artist-in-Residence in 2014 and The Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant in 2015.

Elkins’ first book Black is the Day, Black is the Night won the 2017 Lucie Independent Book Award.  It was Shortlisted for the 2017 Mack First Book Award and the 2016 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Prize as well as listed as one of the Best Photobooks of 2016 by TIME, Humble Arts Foundation, Photobook Store Magazine and Photo-Eye among others.

Her work stems out of an exploration of masculinity and male identity often within constructed or impermanent environments.  Elkins’ earlier work, Wallflower (2004-2008), looks into the nuances of gender identity, vulnerability and the female gaze.  She later went on to investigate aspects of male identity and athleticism through projects Elegant Violence (2010),  where she documented young Ivy League rugby players moments after a game and Danseur (2012), looking to young male ballet dancers moments after intensive training.   

In 2016 Elkins returned to the Wallflower portrait.  Though unlike the original series, which aimed the lens at cisgender men almost entirely photographed within her personal space, Wallflower II explores a much broader sense of masculine identity- shot in the personal space of strangers in urban and rural Georgia upon first meeting and found through online calls / searches surrounding ideas of masculinity and gender in the American South. The work aims to confront socially constructed ideas and standards surrounding both gender and masculinity, vulnerability and beauty.

In 2009 Elkins began working on Black is the Day, Black is the Night, which stretched over a span of 8 years.  The project explores how memory and notions of self are impacted by isolation and long term imprisonment.  This work was made directly through correspondence with men serving life and death row sentences in some of the most maximum security prisons in the US.  It is often shown side by side with Parting Words, a visual and macabre archive created out of state sourced material of the 500+ prisoners to date executed in the state of Texas. 

Check out the feature on artist AMY ELKINS’ Project “Black is the Day, Black is the Night” featured in WSI Magazine currently on view as on exclusive online exhibition on ARTSY:

https://wsimag.com/art/35463-amy-elkins

#laart #laartist #losangelesart #losangelesartist #losangelesartists #abstractart #modernart #contemporaryart #dailyart #instaart #artcollectors #artcollector #artcritic #collector #modernartist #contemporaryartist #artcollective #arte #kunst #amyelkins #BITDBITN #markmoorefineart #photography  

Mark Moore Fine Art is proud to present “Selected Landscapes from Black Is The Day, Black Is The Night“ by AMY ELKINS

VIEW THIS EXHIBITION NOW AT: https://bit.ly/2FcqLjm

Amy Elkins (b. 1979 Venice, CA) is a photographer currently based in the Greater Los Angeles area.  She received her BFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has been exhibited and published both nationally and internationally, including at The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, GA; Kunsthalle Wien in Vienna, Austria; the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, AZ; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; North Carolina Museum of Art; Light Work Gallery in Syracuse, Aperture Gallery and Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York, De Soto Gallery in Los Angeles, the Houston Center for Photography in Houston, TX among others. 

Elkins has been awarded The Lightwork Artist-in-Residence in Syracuse, NY in 2011, the Villa Waldberta International Artist-in-Residence in Munich, Germany in 2012, the Aperture Prize and the Latitude Artist-in-Residence in 2014 and The Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant in 2015.

Elkins’ first book Black is the Day, Black is the Night won the 2017 Lucie Independent Book Award.  It was Shortlisted for the 2017 Mack First Book Award and the 2016 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Prize as well as listed as one of the Best Photobooks of 2016 by TIME, Humble Arts Foundation, Photobook Store Magazine and Photo-Eye among others.

Her work stems out of an exploration of masculinity and male identity often within constructed or impermanent environments.  Elkins’ earlier work, Wallflower (2004-2008), looks into the nuances of gender identity, vulnerability and the female gaze.  She later went on to investigate aspects of male identity and athleticism through projects Elegant Violence (2010),  where she documented young Ivy League rugby players moments after a game and Danseur (2012), looking to young male ballet dancers moments after intensive training.   

In 2016 Elkins returned to the Wallflower portrait.  Though unlike the original series, which aimed the lens at cisgender men almost entirely photographed within her personal space, Wallflower II explores a much broader sense of masculine identity- shot in the personal space of strangers in urban and rural Georgia upon first meeting and found through online calls / searches surrounding ideas of masculinity and gender in the American South. The work aims to confront socially constructed ideas and standards surrounding both gender and masculinity, vulnerability and beauty.

In 2009 Elkins began working on Black is the Day, Black is the Night, which stretched over a span of 8 years.  The project explores how memory and notions of self are impacted by isolation and long term imprisonment.  This work was made directly through correspondence with men serving life and death row sentences in some of the most maximum security prisons in the US.  It is often shown side by side with Parting Words, a visual and macabre archive created out of state sourced material of the 500+ prisoners to date executed in the state of Texas. 

Check out the feature on artist AMY ELKINS’ Project “Black is the Day, Black is the Night” featured in WSI Magazine currently on view as on exclusive online exhibition on ARTSY:

https://wsimag.com/art/35463-amy-elkins

#laart #laartist #losangelesart #losangelesartist #losangelesartists #abstractart #modernart #contemporaryart #dailyart #instaart #artcollectors #artcollector #artcritic #collector #modernartist #contemporaryartist #artcollective #arte #kunst #amyelkins #BITDBITN #markmoorefineart #photography  

Mark Moore Fine Art is proud to present the first ARTSY online exclusive exhibition of work by artist HEIDI SCHWEGLER. In this exhibition of recent work, we examine the artist’s examination of the lives of objects and the transference of memory. This show opens to the public on November 12, 2020.

VIEW THIS SHOW NOW AT: https://bit.ly/2IJnHfX

Heidi Schwegler (b. 1967 in San Antonio, TX) explores a wide range of materials in the service of her subject matter. She is drawn to the peripheral ruin, modifying discarded objects to give them a new sense of purpose. There is an equilibrium inherent in such things – they float between endurance and decay, a living death. In this exclusive ARTSY online exhibition, we survey the recent work of this fascinating artist. 

Schwegler’s numerous shows include exhibitions at the Co/Lab Art Fari (CA), Raid Projects, (CA), Platform China (Beijing), Scope Art 2004 (NY), and the Hallie Ford Museum (OR). Schwegler is a recent Ford Family Fellow, received a 2010 MacDowell Colony Fellowship and several RACC Individual Project Grants. Reviews of Schwegler’s work have appeared in Art in America, Daily Serving, ArtNews and the Huffington Post. She earned her MFA from the University of Oregon and is Chair of the MFA in Applied Craft + Design, a joint program of Oregon College of Art and Craft, and the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

#artexhibition#artshow#contemporaryart#artcollector#artcurator#artconsultant#artadvisor#contemporaryart#abstractart#artcurator#studioisolation#artstudio#studioview#artist#art#modernart#contemporaryart#dailyart#instaart#instagood#contemporaryartist#kunst#artcollectors #markmoorefineart #heidischwegler

Opening October 1, 2020: Ben Weiner “Petals” –  An Exclusive ARTSY Online Exhibition

View This Show Now at: https://bit.ly/3kqQmE5

Mark Moore Fine Art presents “Ben Weiner: Petals” The exhibition presents a group of 18 new drawings of abstracted flowers made using the artist’s unique process of soaking ink-coated paper in drugs and household chemicals. The entire body of work was made at the artist’s home in New York City during its lockdown at the height of the pandemic there. 

As the artist states: “During the lockdown here in New York, my practice became a safe space for me to process my emotions amid the surrounding chaos. My process of soaking drawings in household chemicals gained meaning when we were trapped in our homes, and supplies for basic living such as Advil and alcohol– many in short supply at that time– came into sharp focus. Obviously we were scared for our lives and loved ones, and the motif of flowers seemed to embody all of these concerns and more: as a fixture of the home in traditional still life, a proxy for human connection, an embodiment of beauty, and a symbol of mortality, flowers gave me a simple formal motif into which I could pour the many intense emotions I was experiencing. “

To create the works in “Petals,” Weiner first made ink drawings of flowers, and then soaked them in solutions of drugs including Viagra, Advil, MDMA, and Opium. In the resulting drawings, flowers seem to explode with color and mutate beyond their physical forms, evoking apocalyptic visions, sunsets, and the cosmos. Aptly, such imagery feels simultaneously of the moment, and eternal.

The historical references in this series run accordingly deep, from Dutch still lifes of flowers, to Rothko’s dark color fields, to Damian Hirst’s medical cabinets, to Gehard Richter’s blurred bouquets. A particular source to which Weiner returned throughout the series was the “Unpainted Pictures” series Emil Nolde made in secret after the Nazis prohibited him from painting. In a hidden room in his house, Nolde created watercolors on tiny scraps of paper, his wildly expressive command of color embodying the tumultuous emotions of his inner world. Nolde’s use of color is an evident influence on Weiner’s flower drawings. Less obvious but equally relevant is their shared use of paper as a support. As with Nolde’s “Unpainted Pictures,” the fragility of paper physically embodies the vulnerability Weiner felt at the time he made his flower drawings. 

Indeed, Weiner has stated that the title “Petals” is itself a reference to the thin sheets of paper on which these works were made. Separated from the flower itself, petals can symbolize both passion– as when lovers scatter rose petals on the ground– and the ephemerality of a dying flower, its petals falling away. Weiner has stated that this is how he wants his flower drawings to function: acknowledging our frailty but also emanating emotion, to ultimately create human connection in a time of adversity. 

Ben Weiner (b. 1980, Burlington, VT) received his BA from Wesleyan University (CT). He also studied under Mexican muralist José Lazcarro at Universidad de las Americas (Mexico) and has worked closely with artists Jeff Koons, Kim Sooja and Amy Yoes as an assistant. He has exhibited his work widely across the United States and in Mexico with solo shows in Los Angeles, New York and Puebla, and group exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Miami, New Haven, Ridgefield, Los Angeles and Riverside. His paintings can be found in the Sammlung/Collection (Germany), the Progressive Collection (OH), and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation Collection (CA). The artist lives and works in New York City.

For more information, visit our website at: https://www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/ben-charles-weiner

#contemporaryart #contemporarypainting #abstractart #abstractpainting #artcurator #studioisolation #artstudio #studioview #painting #painter #artist #markmoorefineart #benweiner #bencharlesweiner

Mark Moore Fine Art is proud to present the first ARTSY online exclusive exhibition of work by Canadian-painter MICHAEL BATTY.

VIEW THIS SHOW NOW AT: https://bit.ly/3jprqfX

Michael Batty is a painter and a printmaker that operates with a formal language arising from a microcosm of the particle world. The minimalist pieces speak with geometry and line, and explores the balance between order and chaos by introducing random elements to the tightly rendered surfaces.

The artists builds up a webbed network of intersecting lines by cutting into the surface of the painting with a knife; creating thin ridges and minute grooves. The incised lines catch and divert the paint, creating a random ground of pigment with a shifting depth of color to create quantum imagery. 

In these works, the artistic creation is an open-ended play of traces in which the work gives up to a new kind of beauty, one that is mobile and elusive. Each image with its cicatrix seems to deal with the physical world, but give no easy name to their places. In a poststructuralist mode, using a non-traditional tool of a knife rather than a brush, Batty explores a tension, juxtaposing the hard edge of the knife with the soft flow of the paint, evoking a sense of infinity.

Also detectable in the work is a similar sensibility to the work of the Futurists, in their attempt to capture movement depicting it so as to convey a sense of dynamism of the contemporary world. These works allow the artist to remain open to the effects of chance, thereby facing his void – activating it with incisions that now mark him, as much as the work he produces. This discovery process is ongoing and non-linear. One edits only to find that the trace of what has been erased has reappeared, indeed, given rise to the eternal return. 

Michael Batty graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver in 1989 with a major in painting. He attended the renowned artist workshops in Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, and studied printmaking at The Art Institute at Capilano College in Vancouver. Batty’s paintings can be found in collections around the world, including the Waldorf Astoria in Beijing, China, W Guangzhou, China, Four Seasons, Dubai, UAE, and Bank of Montreal in Calgary and Toronto.

#artexhibition #artshow #painting #contemporarypainting #contemporaryart #artcollector #artcurator #artconsultant #artadvisor #laart #laartist #losangelesart #losangelesartist #losangelesartists #abstractart #modernart #contemporaryart #dailyart #instaart #artcollectors #artcollector #artcritic #collector #modernartist #contemporaryartist #abstractartist #artcollective #arte #kunst #michaelbatty #markmoorefineart #markmooregallery 

Eric Orr Film Documentary

I hold these works of Eric Orr very dear to my heart as I had the honor and the pleasure of representing and exhibiting the artist from 1984 until 1994, when I moved my gallery to Santa Monica. Eric Orr was an incredible artist and his works are vastly underappreciated in the context of both Light and Space works from the West Coast and his painting and sculpture of the Eighties and Nineties. I would highly recommend that you view the excellent film on his life and work recently released by his daughter, Elizabeth Orr. 

The film is called “Crazy Wisdom,” in honor of the kind of holy madness that Orr admired in Buddhist thought, and that he lived every moment of his life. Peggy Orr says that her husband was “a showman, a personality, a genius…” His friends, interviewed by Elizabeth for her film, concur, and have a few more comments on top of that. For your reference, you can view a two-minute trailer for this film online at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H77cb2ZrEI&feature=youtu.be

ERIC ORR (1939-1998)
Without Red, 1983
Oil, blood, and chinese hair on canvas with lead frame and gold leaf
29 × 24 × 1 1/2 in / 73.7 × 61 × 3.8 cm

In both his installations, sculpture and paintings, Eric Orr worked with elemental qualities of natural materials; stone, metal, water, and fire, gold leaf, lead, blood, human skull, and AM/FM radio parts. Orr worked with the phenomenological exploration of perception. His body of work also includes monochromatic paintings, and large-scale fountains (with water & fire). His work was influenced by a religio-philosophical conceptualization of space icons found in ancient religions and cultures, such as Egyptian symbolism and Buddhist Spiritualism. Orr is associated with Light and Space, a group of mostly West Coast artists whose work is primarily concerned with perceptual experience stemming from the viewer’s interaction with their work. “The space itself changes you, instead of an object.”

He was “an outlaw,” says Kent Hodgetts, “a raconteur,” says Larry Bell, “terrifically literate,” says Maurice Tuchman. Susan Kaiser Vogel remembers his “unconditional friendship,” and that he provided “adventures in the crazy zone.” Orr was, in fact, California’s version of Yves Klein, a metaphysical adventurer who was unafraid of limits and who saw potential where others saw impediments and voids.

By his death in 1998, Eric Orr had fearlessly taken his experiential art in an astonishing range of directions, while at the same time remaining interested in essential experiences and elements. He might have been surprised to find that his work has had a kind of reincarnation through the efforts of his children. “I also relate to early Buddhism in that I have no sense of the afterlife,” he once told me. “I think we’re like television sets, and when we die, the off button is pushed and the show is over.”

#laart #laartist #losangelesart #losangelesartist #losangelesartists #abstractart #modernart #contemporaryart #dailyart #instaart #artcollectors #artcollector #artcritic #collector #modernartist #contemporaryartist #abstractartist #artcollective #arte #kunst #markmoorefineart #markmooregallery #ericorr #crazywisdom

Vernon Fisher “Angel Face”: An Exclusive ARTSY Online Exhibition

View Now at: https://bit.ly/3i94elS

VERNON FISHER’s new paintings are typically enigmatic; at first they seem humorous, yet on further study they reveal deeper subtext and irony. The predominant images are from Otto Preminger’s largely forgotten 1952 film Angel Face, starring Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons. As FISHER states:

It’s not a great movie, but I was interested in its generic film noir qualities, its “atmosphere,” and the fact that it wasn’t popular enough to be available on video – therefore there would be a minimum of nostalgic misreading. The actors and the genre provide a set of expectations for my misadventures with them in the paintings.

FISHER disrupts the atmosphere evoked by the film’s imagery with the addition of text and his familiar vignettes. There is a discrepancy between how each painting looks and what the added writing says. The text mimics typewriting, with numerous handwritten notations and corrections added, and is situated on each painting like a film subtitle. This serves to confuse the reading of the image and to further distance it from the cinematic source. The viewer is also engaged by the addition of the smaller, hovering vignettes, which may suggest anything from cartoon thought balloons to desktop icons.

Vernon Fisher was born in 1943 in Fort Worth, Texas. He studied English literature at the Hardin-Simmons University, where he received a BA in 1967. Vernon got his MFA in 1969, from the University of Illinois. As a true Fort Worth child, Fisher was raised and is still living in his hometown, where he enjoys appreciation as one of the Texas’s most internationally recognized artists.

The art of Vernon Fisher is included in the collections of more than 40 museums across the globe, such as the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Phoenix Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. The most important museum installation is in the collection of the famous Museum of Modern Art in New York.

#markmoorefineart #vernonfisher #artexhibition #artshow #painting #contemporarypainting #contemporaryart #artcollector #artcurator #artconsultant #artadvisor 

Mark Moore Fine Art is proud to present the first ARTSY online exclusive exhibition of work by Canadian-painter MICHAEL BATTY.

VIEW THIS SHOW NOW AT: https://bit.ly/3jprqfX

Michael Batty is a painter and a printmaker that operates with a formal language arising from a microcosm of the particle world. The minimalist pieces speak with geometry and line, and explores the balance between order and chaos by introducing random elements to the tightly rendered surfaces.

The artists builds up a webbed network of intersecting lines by cutting into the surface of the painting with a knife; creating thin ridges and minute grooves. The incised lines catch and divert the paint, creating a random ground of pigment with a shifting depth of color to create quantum imagery. 

In these works, the artistic creation is an open-ended play of traces in which the work gives up to a new kind of beauty, one that is mobile and elusive. Each image with its cicatrix seems to deal with the physical world, but give no easy name to their places. In a poststructuralist mode, using a non-traditional tool of a knife rather than a brush, Batty explores a tension, juxtaposing the hard edge of the knife with the soft flow of the paint, evoking a sense of infinity.

Also detectable in the work is a similar sensibility to the work of the Futurists, in their attempt to capture movement depicting it so as to convey a sense of dynamism of the contemporary world. These works allow the artist to remain open to the effects of chance, thereby facing his void – activating it with incisions that now mark him, as much as the work he produces. This discovery process is ongoing and non-linear. One edits only to find that the trace of what has been erased has reappeared, indeed, given rise to the eternal return. 

Michael Batty graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver in 1989 with a major in painting. He attended the renowned artist workshops in Emma Lake, Saskatchewan, and studied printmaking at The Art Institute at Capilano College in Vancouver. Batty’s paintings can be found in collections around the world, including the Waldorf Astoria in Beijing, China, W Guangzhou, China, Four Seasons, Dubai, UAE, and Bank of Montreal in Calgary and Toronto.

#artexhibition #artshow #painting #contemporarypainting #contemporaryart #artcollector #artcurator #artconsultant #artadvisor #laart #laartist #losangelesart #losangelesartist #losangelesartists #abstractart #modernart #contemporaryart #dailyart #instaart #artcollectors #artcollector #artcritic #collector #modernartist #contemporaryartist #abstractartist #artcollective #arte #kunst #michaelbatty #markmoorefineart #markmooregallery 

Opening October 1, 2020: Ben Weiner “Petals” –  An Exclusive ARTSY Online Exhibition

View This Show Now at: https://bit.ly/3kqQmE5

Mark Moore Fine Art presents “Ben Weiner: Petals” The exhibition presents a group of 18 new drawings of abstracted flowers made using the artist’s unique process of soaking ink-coated paper in drugs and household chemicals. The entire body of work was made at the artist’s home in New York City during its lockdown at the height of the pandemic there. 

As the artist states: “During the lockdown here in New York, my practice became a safe space for me to process my emotions amid the surrounding chaos. My process of soaking drawings in household chemicals gained meaning when we were trapped in our homes, and supplies for basic living such as Advil and alcohol– many in short supply at that time– came into sharp focus. Obviously we were scared for our lives and loved ones, and the motif of flowers seemed to embody all of these concerns and more: as a fixture of the home in traditional still life, a proxy for human connection, an embodiment of beauty, and a symbol of mortality, flowers gave me a simple formal motif into which I could pour the many intense emotions I was experiencing. “

To create the works in “Petals,” Weiner first made ink drawings of flowers, and then soaked them in solutions of drugs including Viagra, Advil, MDMA, and Opium. In the resulting drawings, flowers seem to explode with color and mutate beyond their physical forms, evoking apocalyptic visions, sunsets, and the cosmos. Aptly, such imagery feels simultaneously of the moment, and eternal.

The historical references in this series run accordingly deep, from Dutch still lifes of flowers, to Rothko’s dark color fields, to Damian Hirst’s medical cabinets, to Gehard Richter’s blurred bouquets. A particular source to which Weiner returned throughout the series was the “Unpainted Pictures” series Emil Nolde made in secret after the Nazis prohibited him from painting. In a hidden room in his house, Nolde created watercolors on tiny scraps of paper, his wildly expressive command of color embodying the tumultuous emotions of his inner world. Nolde’s use of color is an evident influence on Weiner’s flower drawings. Less obvious but equally relevant is their shared use of paper as a support. As with Nolde’s “Unpainted Pictures,” the fragility of paper physically embodies the vulnerability Weiner felt at the time he made his flower drawings. 

Indeed, Weiner has stated that the title “Petals” is itself a reference to the thin sheets of paper on which these works were made. Separated from the flower itself, petals can symbolize both passion– as when lovers scatter rose petals on the ground– and the ephemerality of a dying flower, its petals falling away. Weiner has stated that this is how he wants his flower drawings to function: acknowledging our frailty but also emanating emotion, to ultimately create human connection in a time of adversity. 

Ben Weiner (b. 1980, Burlington, VT) received his BA from Wesleyan University (CT). He also studied under Mexican muralist José Lazcarro at Universidad de las Americas (Mexico) and has worked closely with artists Jeff Koons, Kim Sooja and Amy Yoes as an assistant. He has exhibited his work widely across the United States and in Mexico with solo shows in Los Angeles, New York and Puebla, and group exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Miami, New Haven, Ridgefield, Los Angeles and Riverside. His paintings can be found in the Sammlung/Collection (Germany), the Progressive Collection (OH), and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation Collection (CA). The artist lives and works in New York City.

For more information, visit our website at: https://www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/ben-charles-weiner

#contemporaryart #contemporarypainting #abstractart #abstractpainting #artcurator #studioisolation #artstudio #studioview #painting #painter #artist #markmoorefineart #benweiner #bencharlesweiner

Eric Orr Film Documentary

I hold these works of Eric Orr very dear to my heart as I had the honor and the pleasure of representing and exhibiting the artist from 1984 until 1994, when I moved my gallery to Santa Monica. Eric Orr was an incredible artist and his works are vastly underappreciated in the context of both Light and Space works from the West Coast and his painting and sculpture of the Eighties and Nineties. I would highly recommend that you view the excellent film on his life and work recently released by his daughter, Elizabeth Orr. 

The film is called “Crazy Wisdom,” in honor of the kind of holy madness that Orr admired in Buddhist thought, and that he lived every moment of his life. Peggy Orr says that her husband was “a showman, a personality, a genius…” His friends, interviewed by Elizabeth for her film, concur, and have a few more comments on top of that. For your reference, you can view a two-minute trailer for this film online at the following link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H77cb2ZrEI&feature=youtu.be

ERIC ORR (1939-1998)
Without Red, 1983
Oil, blood, and chinese hair on canvas with lead frame and gold leaf
29 × 24 × 1 1/2 in / 73.7 × 61 × 3.8 cm

In both his installations, sculpture and paintings, Eric Orr worked with elemental qualities of natural materials; stone, metal, water, and fire, gold leaf, lead, blood, human skull, and AM/FM radio parts. Orr worked with the phenomenological exploration of perception. His body of work also includes monochromatic paintings, and large-scale fountains (with water & fire). His work was influenced by a religio-philosophical conceptualization of space icons found in ancient religions and cultures, such as Egyptian symbolism and Buddhist Spiritualism. Orr is associated with Light and Space, a group of mostly West Coast artists whose work is primarily concerned with perceptual experience stemming from the viewer’s interaction with their work. “The space itself changes you, instead of an object.”

He was “an outlaw,” says Kent Hodgetts, “a raconteur,” says Larry Bell, “terrifically literate,” says Maurice Tuchman. Susan Kaiser Vogel remembers his “unconditional friendship,” and that he provided “adventures in the crazy zone.” Orr was, in fact, California’s version of Yves Klein, a metaphysical adventurer who was unafraid of limits and who saw potential where others saw impediments and voids.

By his death in 1998, Eric Orr had fearlessly taken his experiential art in an astonishing range of directions, while at the same time remaining interested in essential experiences and elements. He might have been surprised to find that his work has had a kind of reincarnation through the efforts of his children. “I also relate to early Buddhism in that I have no sense of the afterlife,” he once told me. “I think we’re like television sets, and when we die, the off button is pushed and the show is over.”

#laart #laartist #losangelesart #losangelesartist #losangelesartists #abstractart #modernart #contemporaryart #dailyart #instaart #artcollectors #artcollector #artcritic #collector #modernartist #contemporaryartist #abstractartist #artcollective #arte #kunst #markmoorefineart #markmooregallery #ericorr #crazywisdom