Mark Moore Fine Art Blog

The gallery is pleased to announce the Museum of Art and History‘s recent acquisition of “Traced Gesture (Aqua Caliente)”(2014), by artist David Ryan.

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.

David Ryan (b. 1971, Texas) gleans inspiration from the slick colors and lines of cars, electronic gadgets and household appliances to transform mundane, undesirable MDF into luxurious, enticing wall-sculptures. By creating multiple (literal) layers, Ryan explores the way line, shape and shadow interact to produce perceptual conundrums that intrigue his viewer. Thus his conceptually multi-layered pieces speak not only of glossy consumer products but also refer to phenomenology and complex art theories. His work explores the dynamic between craft and production, art and design, man and machine.

Ryan received his BFA from the University of Texas in Austin, TX before making the move to earn his MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (NV) where he studied under Dave Hickey and Libby Lumpkin. His work has been exhibited
at the Laguna Art Museum (CA), Las Vegas Art Museum (NV), Galerie Jean-Luc & Takako Richard (Paris), Seomi & Tuus (Seoul), Davidson Contemporary (NY), and James Kelly Contemporary (NM). David Ryan lives and works in Las Vegas.

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

The gallery is pleased to announce that Joshua Dildine‘s painting “Yards Relish” (2015), which is included in the gallery’s current exhibition, was acquired by the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation (CA) for its permanent collection.

THE FREDERICK R. WEISMAN ART FOUNDATION is dedicated to continuing the legacy and vision of Frederick R. Weisman, an extraordinary entrepreneur, philanthropist, and art collector. He held an uncompromising belief in the cultural value of art and understood the importance of both the individual artist and creative process. In carrying out Mr. Weisman’s intentions, the Foundation seeks to preserve, collect, and make publicly accessible his collection of modern and contemporary art as a means to strengthen and contribute to the greater artistic and intellectual life of our time.

More than four hundred works of art are on display at the Foundation. The collection includes works by European Modernists including Cezanne, Picasso, and Kandinsky and Surrealist works by Ernst, Miro, and Magritte. The holdings in postwar art include works by Giacometti, Noguchi, Calder, Rauschenberg, and Johns; Abstract Expressionist paintings by de Kooning, Francis, Still, and Rothko; Color-Field paintings by Frankenthaler, Louis, and Noland; and Pop Art by Warhol, Lichtenstein, Oldenburg, and Rosenquist. Contemporary California works include those by Ruscha and Goode, and Super Realist sculptures by Hanson and de Andrea.

These holdings are part of a larger collection that Mr. Weisman established as the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation in 1982. Currently under the direction of Billie Milam Weisman, the Foundation continues to make the collection available through loans to museums worldwide, docent tours at the Los Angeles estate, exhibitions in public-art venues, and the funding of several art museums, including the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University in Malibu, the New Orleans Museum of Art, the San Diego Museum of Art, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota, designed by Frank O. Gehry.

Dildine (b. 1984, CA), received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University (CA). He has been featured in group exhibitions in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Murfreesboro, as well as the Frederick Weisman Museum of Fine Art (CA). His work is included in the public collection of the Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California Riverside (Riverside, CA). He was also the recipient of the 2010 Claremont Graduate University Award. The artist lives and works in Claremont, CA.

Yards Relish

The gallery is pleased to announce the Tang Museum‘s acquisition of a major work by  Jeffry Mitchell, “Flower Pot With Flower Growing Out of Hole” (2012), for it’s permanent collection.

The Tang Collection of over 7,000 objects represents a wide variety of materials, subject matter, and time periods. From Pre-Columbian pots to works made by current contemporary artists, our collection offers an unlimited variety of opportunities for study, inspiration, and discussion for the Skidmore community and beyond. The collection is used in imaginative ways and varying contexts through classes, exhibitions, and research.

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.

The gallery is pleased to announce the Museum of Art and History‘s recent acquisition of “Imagination is Always the Winner” (2013), by artist Joshua Dildine.

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.

Merging found autobiographical photographs with viciously gestural painting, Joshua Dildine confronts the subject of conventional recollection and familial structure. A fixation shared by society at large, the contemplation of past events and relationships ultimately shapes our psychology moving forward – as a flicker of nostalgia, shame, or glee can be activated by a single sensory cue. With a purposeful cognizance, Dildine mines these memories for the underlying traits that forge our shared humanity: the humor found in the compromising, the endearment found in the aggravating, or the conflict found in the absent. His painterly swaths are as visceral as the family photos they conceal, his vivid palette alluding to the glaring absurdity of our incessant self-analysis and contemplation of the past. In his most recent body of work, Dildine embellishes elements or patterns within the original image in order to create a farcical confrontation with the past – a perspective that is both critical and celebratory. Through this carefully disjointed lens, Dildine creates experiences that are at once present and bygone, and whimsically harnesses nature of our being.

Dildine (b. 1984, CA), received his MFA from Claremont Graduate University (CA). He has been featured in group exhibitions in Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Murfreesboro, as well as the Frederick Weisman Museum of Fine Art (CA). His work is included in the public collection of the Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California Riverside (Riverside, CA). He was also the recipient of the 2010 Claremont Graduate University Award. The artist lives and works in Claremont, CA.

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

Imagination is Always the Winner, 2013 / acrylic, spray paint, oil and uv coated ink on canvas / 66 x 60 inches

Gallery artist Kiel Johnson was recently asked to participate in Adobe’s WTFIT challenge. Participants in the challenge receive a box with several items in it and a word representing a concept. They have one week to create something using every item in the box, and adding only glue and paint.

Click here to see how Kiel handled the challenge.

A new interview with gallery artist David Maisel is now up on Photogrvphy.com. In the interview, Maisel discusses his first experiences with aerial photography, his inspirations, and his future plans.

My first experience with aerial photography was in 1983. I was invited by my professor, the photographer Emmet Gowin, to accompany him on an expedition to the volcano Mount St Helens, which had erupted several years earlier. The aerial vantage point permitted views of the transformed earth which would never have been attainable from the ground. What fascinated and astonished and troubled me most was not the aftermath of the volcano, but the clearcutting of the area by the logging industry. That experience set the course for much of my future work of looking at what I call synthetic landscapes, that is, sites that have been transformed by human intervention.

Read the full interview here.

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

The Lake Project 13, 2002

Gallery artist Kiel Johnson is part of the group exhibition, Hysterical Friction: Works on Paper from JAUS LA, opening tomorrow at TSA New York. This is the first part of the Trading Aces project organized by ARTRA and Ashley Garrett – TSA New York will be exhibiting at JAUS in the fall.

To learn more about the exhibition click here.

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

Kiel Johnson. Generate-Regenerate. 2014. Graphite on paper. 9 x 12 inches

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