Mark Moore Fine Art Blog

Christopher Russell has written an essay about his work in this month’s issue of Exposure Magazine titled, “A Promiscuous Lens.”  In the article, Russell details several bodies of work, and his shift from Los Angeles to Portland.

Read the essay here.

Austin-based artist collaborative Okay Mountain repackages, reconstitutes and rekindles our consumerist desires with a sardonic edge. With ten members, the group creates installations and multi-media assemblage works that mimic the stock vernacular of our communal materialism, yet tweaks them just enough to reveal our superficial insecurities and convictions.

Join Residence/SF tonight – Friday, March 4 -from 8-10pm for the Opening Reception of Okay Mountain’s 6-day exhibition, where several collaborative videos and works on paper will be on view. Additional viewing hours listed below:

Saturday 11am-11pm
Sunday 11am-9pm
Monday 6-9pm
Tuesday 6-9pm
Wednesday 6-9pm
Thursday 7-10pm

Okay Mountain is a nine member artist collective based in Austin, Texas. Formed in 2006 as an artist-run alternative gallery space, the group has exhibited their drawing, video, sound, and performance projects throughout the United States and in Mexico City, and has been widely recognized for its “inventive construction, loving attention to detail and keen-eyed connoisseurship.” Okay Mountain repackages, reconstitutes, and rekindles our consumerist desires with a sardonic edge. Their installations and multi-media assemblage works mimic the stock vernacular of our communal materialism, yet tweak them just enough to reveal our superficial insecurities and convictions.

While most artists are alumni of the University of Texas at Austin (TX), others are graduates of University of California Los Angeles (CA), Rhode Island School of Design (RI), and the University of Kansas (KS). Institutional exhibitions have included those at the Blaffer Art Museum at the University of Houston (TX), Austin Museum of Art (TX), McNay Art Museum (TX), Arthouse (TX), University of Tennessee, Chattanooga (TN), and the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum (MA). Their work is included in the permanent collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (CT), McNay Museum of Art (TX), Orange County Museum of Art (CA), Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (CA), Santa Barabara Museum of Art (CA), and Vanderbilt University (TN).

Lester Monzon‘s solo show Si vis pacem para bellum is in the L.A. Times as one of seven  must-see exhibitions this week.

Click here to see who else made the list.

The exhibition is up through April 9th at the gallery.

John Bauer is the subject of an online essay in Curator Magazine by Brent Everett Dickinson, “John Bauer Is Producing Heat after Death.” The article details Bauer’s recent solo show at Duke Gallery of Azusa Pacific University.

Read the essay here.

Gallery artist Zemer Peled is the subject of a new time lapse video on YouTube. The short video is a unique,  behind-the-scenes look at her intensive sculpture making technique. 

Click here to go to YouTube to watch the video or stream it below. 

This piece is part of the group show ‘Unconventional Clay: Engaged in Change’ at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO.

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

Shaun Gladwell‘s recent video work is the topic of a new Artsy editorial.

“In Self Portrait Spinning and Falling in Paris (2015), the London-based Australian spins precariously on a skateboard in front of four distinct and highly recognizable public spaces in Paris. The backdrops—including the Louvre’s Cour Napoléon and the Bastille—aren’t exactly known for pratfalls. Nevertheless, Gladwell tumbles in front of each as passersby look on. His “misuse” of public space is a gesture of defiance practically synonymous with freestyle skateboarding.”

Read the editorial here.

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

Opening Reception: February 25, 6-8:30 PM
On View Through: April 9 2016

Mark Moore Gallery
5790 Washington Blvd
Culver City, CA 90232
Telephone 310 453 3031
www.markmooregallery.com

Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to present “All The Ways,” a solo exhibition of new works by media artist Jason Salavon. This marks Salavon’s third solo show with the gallery.

In his new body of work, Salavon explores the ways in which infinite variation and permutation—supercharged by large networks—is the engine of our exploding digitized culture. Debuting 14 new works in a variety of media, the artist furthers his investigation of the vast visual capacity engendered by an ever-advancing social and technological landscape. With an emphasis on the recent massive exponential growth of digital data, Salavon uses pop cultural touchstones to guide us through various examples of the unbounded possibilities of this phenomenon. Using familiar imagery, such as The Simpsons’ long running couch gag, Salavon layers and manipulates visual data into abstraction. By altering the digital information in a new format, he demonstrates the power of interpretation and probability by utilizing the multitudes of storylines and data.

Though technically accomplished, the works resonate most strongly through how they reflect our moment. With a critical eye, Salavon is attentive to mass culture as a ubiquitous language that inexorably displays the predilections, obsessions, and mannerisms of our time. In the piece “The Master Index,” Salavon has created a master list of the five million most popular Wikipedia articles entries, summing up the internet’s interests in a comprehensive archive. The list itself becomes a bizarre visual artifact, with “Japan” situated between “Miley Cyrus” and “Selena Gomez,” and “Human penis size” just following “Abraham Lincoln.” With a witty approach to contemporary computation, Salavon’s reductive methods reveal underlying currents—and absurdities—creating a body of work that feels like a wild ride through the collective digital consciousness.

Concurrently in Gallery Two, the gallery is pleased to present “Si vis pacem para bellum,” the gallery’s second solo show from Los Angeles based artist Lester Monzon. Continuing his exploration of melding rigid patterns with abstract expressionist techniques, Monzon creates works that express the organized chaos of everyday urban reality.

In this new body of work, Monzon begins with limitations. In an ode to minimalism he works within the confines of the grid, creating layers of intricate formal patterns– only to destroy them and create them again. Utilizing the grid as a backdrop, the artist sets the stage for large expressive areas of thick, colorful strokes and free flowing pigment. Through a repetition of tight structures, destruction, and large loosely painted area, Monzon builds a tension–collapsing references to architecture, space, and art history. As art critic Natilie Hareen wrote in Art Forum about Monzon’s work, “Seemingly all the formal painting devices from the last fifty years have been brought to bear in Monzon’s canvases: the gestural brushstroke; the grid as found compositional device; the chance-determined stain; and the diagrammatic line. ” All of this plays out to reflect a strangely familiar reality. Be it graffiti on tiles in a public bathroom or stains on the sidewalk, Monzon’s paintings echoes the intricately mapped bedlam that surrounds us, and how beautiful it can be.

Monzon (b. 1973, Brooklyn) received his M.F.A. from Art Center College of Design (CA). His work has been exhibited at the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art (CA), in addition to shows in San Francisco, Chicago, and Los Angeles. His work is included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA). The artist lives and works in Los Angeles (CA).

Born in 1970 in Indianapolis, Salavon obtained his MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago (IL). He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. Houston, Seattle, Cologne, Seoul, London, Geneva, Basel and Paris, among others, and been featured in exhibitions at venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Smithsonian Institution (D.C.), and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA). Salavon’s work has been acquired for the public collections of the International Center of Photography (NY), Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), Museum of Fine Arts (TX), Museum of Contemporary Art (IL), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Columbus Museum of Art (OH), Museum of Modern Art (NY) and more. In 2013, he was named one of the “50 Under 50: The Next Most Collectible Artists” by Art + Auction Magazine. Salavon lives and works in Chicago, IL.

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

Jason Salavon / All the Ways (Seasons 4 & 5), 2016  / archival inkjet on paper / 77.5” x 59”/ Ed of 5

Opening Reception: February 25, 2016 6:00-8:30pm
On View: February 25 – April 16, 2016

Mark Moore Gallery is pleased to present All The Ways, a solo exhibition of new works by media artist Jason Salavon. This marks Salavon’s third solo show with the gallery.

In his new body of work, Salavon explores the ways in which infinite variation and permutation—supercharged by large networks—is the engine of our exploding digitized culture. Debuting 14 new works in a variety of media, the artist furthers his investigation of the vast visual capacity engendered by an ever-advancing social and technological landscape. With an emphasis on the recent massive exponential growth of digital data, Salavon uses pop cultural touchstones to guide us through various examples of the unbounded possibilities of this phenomenon. Using familiar imagery, such as The Simpsons’ long running couch gag, Salavon layers and manipulates visual data into abstraction. By altering the digital information in a new format, he demonstrates the power of interpretation and probability by utilizing the multitudes of story lines and data.

Though technically accomplished, the works resonate most strongly through how they reflect our moment. With a critical eye, Salavon is attentive to mass culture as a ubiquitous language that inexorably displays the predilections, obsessions, and mannerisms of our time. In the piece “The Master Index,” Salavon has created a master list of the five million most popular Wikipedia articles entries, summing up the internet’s interests in a comprehensive archive. The list itself becomes a bizarre visual artifact, with “Japan” situated between “Miley Cyrus” and “Selena Gomez,” and “Human penis size” just following “Abraham Lincoln.” With a witty approach to contemporary computation, Salavon’s reductive methods reveal underlying currents—and absurdities—creating a body of work that feels like a wild ride through the collective digital consciousness.

Born in 1970 in Indianapolis, Salavon obtained his MFA from the School of the Art Institute Chicago (IL). He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington D.C. Houston, Seattle, Cologne, Seoul, London, Geneva, Basel and Paris, among others, and been featured in exhibitions at venues such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Smithsonian Institution (D.C.), and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA). Salavon’s work has been acquired for the public collections of the International Center of Photography (NY), Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), Museum of Fine Arts (TX), Museum of Contemporary Art (IL), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Columbus Museum of Art (OH), Museum of Modern Art (NY) and more. In 2013, he was named one of the “50 Under 50: The Next Most Collectible Artists” by Art + Auction Magazine. Salavon lives and works in Chicago, IL.

Gallery artist Jean Shin has a solo show, Surface Tension, opening at Cristin Tierny Gallery on February 25th.

Shin is nationally recognized for her monumental installations that transform everyday objects into elegant expressions of identity and community. In Surface Tension, she investigates the divide between public and private in urban spaces by using a material very familiar to New York City residents: the plywood walls surrounding construction sites.

At first glance, the exhibition seems comprised of a series of monolithic paintings on panel, each featuring an abstract composition modeled in subtly varied tones of blue. The panels’ beauty, however, belies their distinctive origins: they previously served as construction fencing, and their compositions are products of chance that document a dialogue between two opposing forces at work. With surfaces that have been continually painted over after every new appearance of graffiti, paper posts, and other marks, the “paintings” in Surface Tension are, in fact, found objects chronicling past erasures.

The results of this contested partnership between public expressions like graffiti and their subsequent redaction allude to the deep history of negotiating urban space. City residents, living in constantly changing environments, know this negotiation well. Construction fences abound in neighborhoods and line commutes, intervening in daily activity. Displaying these “collective paintings” in the gallery, the artist calls attention to what is often overlooked, revealing in the painted gestures the unintended byproducts of urban transformation with all of its inherent engagement and struggle.

Jean Shin attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received a BFA and MS from Pratt Institute. Her work has been widely exhibited worldwide including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, The Montclair Art Museum, and the Crow Collection of Asian Art. Her works have been featured and commissioned in over 150 exhibitions in major museums and cultural institutions such as: The New Museum of Contemporary Art; The Brooklyn Museum; The Queens Museum; The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Asia Society; SculptureCenter; and The Museum of Arts and Design.

Shin has received numerous awards, including the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Architecture/Environmental Structures and Sculpture, Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Art award. Shin’s many notable public art commissions include the General Services Administration, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, and more. Her work is held in the permanent collections of The Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Rose Art Museum, The Honolulu Museum of Art, The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Boise Art Museum, and The Fabric Workshop and Museum. In 2016, Jean Shin will complete a major commission for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, New York at the 63rd Street Station on the new Second Avenue Subway line. In March, she will begin a residency at Material for the Arts in Long Island City. Shin lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

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

Penelope Umbrico is giving a talk this evening on photography in the digital age at the Harry Ransom Center.

Penelope Umbrico is known for her photographic works exploring the relationship between modern technology and professional photography, the widespread availability and consumption of internet images, and for repurposing images from catalogs and websites like Flickr to reflect the fluidity and mutability of photography in the digital age.

Umbrico will discuss her use of photo-sharing and consumer websites as an expansive archive as she navigates between producer and consumer. Her work is featured in the current exhibition.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 7 P.M. AT THE RANSOM CENTER

Click here for more information.