Mark Moore Fine Art Blog

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.

VICE Magazine recently released its “Best Short Films” of 2014, and gallery artist Allison Schulnik is included in its ranks! Focusing on her most recent video, “Eager” (2014), the publication declares:

Flowers and blades of grass dance a dark and twisted ballet in Eager, a short animated film where mutated horses and wispy ghost women join the plants. Watching these creatures transform, blossom, grow, die, and regenerate in clay is like sliding comfortably through an enlightening acid trip. Its morphing colors and choreographed clay shapes and figures are inexplicably beautiful and set to an excellent score by Aaron M. Olson. Artist and animator Allison Schulnik, perhaps best known for her ​Grizzly Bear music video, has created her most stunning and mature work yet.

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

The gallery is pleased to share David Pagel’s LA Times review of Kris Kuksi‘s current solo exhibition, “Antiquity in the Faux.” Please find the article below in its entirety:

The insanely detailed sculptures in Kris Kuksi’s exhibition “Antiquity in the Faux” are 3-D versions of graphic novels whose imagery has taken up all the space and left no room for text. In Kuksi’s hands, that’s not a bad trade-off. It leaves viewers free to let our eyeballs race wildly, running every which way as stories get tangled up in Gordian knots of mind-blowing complexity.

If the devil is in the details, Kuksi’s sculptures are among today’s most devilish.

This exhibition remains on view through 6pm on Saturday, December 20th.

Born in 1973 in Springfield, Missouri, Kris Kuksi earned his BFA and MFA in painting at Fort Hays State University. He also studied internationally while enrolled in programs in Germany, Austria, and Italy. His work has been featured in over 100 exhibitions worldwide, including those at La Halle Satin Pierre Museum (Paris), Museum of the History of Science (Oxford), Williamsburg Art and Historial Society (New York), and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery (D.C.), as well as within numerous international art magazines and fictional book covers. Solo exhibitions of his work have been presented in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, Basel, Toronto, Berlin, Washington D.C., and Kansas City. The artist lives and works in Lawrence, Kansas, and is also represented by Joshua Liner Gallery (NY).

In conjunction with Sans35, the gallery produced a video interview featuring Kuksi. For more information about the exhibition artists, or available work, please feel free to contact the gallery, and we will accommodate your needs.

The gallery is pleased to announce the Blanton Museum‘s acquisition of “Explosion #8” by gallery artist, Christopher Russell.

The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the foremost university art museums in the country, and has the largest and most comprehensive collection of art in Central Texas. The Blanton’s permanent collection of more than 17,000 works is recognized for its European paintings, an encyclopedic collection of prints and drawings, and modern and contemporary American and Latin American art.

The Blanton is considered one of the university’s many Gems along with The Harry Ransom Center, the Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas Press, UT Libraries, the Graduate School, and the Michener Center for Writers. Located at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Congress Avenue, the museum is across the street from the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum and is adjacent to downtown Austin.

We congratulate Christopher on this momentous occasion, and thank the Blanton for its continued support of his work. If you have questions about this artist or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

Mark Moore Gallery is proud to announce the acquisition of Kris Kuksi’s “Churchtank Type 9” (2010) by the Crocker Art Museum. Joining their permanent collection of Californian and American Art, “Churchtank Type 9” will be included in a cohesive group of artists that spans from the 19th century to the present.

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, 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.

We congratulate Kris on this incredible milestone, and encourage you to visit his current solo exhibition at the gallery – “Antiquity in the Faux” – on view through Saturday, December 20th. For more information about the artist, or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.