Mark Moore Fine Art Blog

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.

Gallery artist Penelope Umbrico currently has work on view at the Photographer’s Gallery in London (UK). Titled “Sun/Screen” (2014), the new media project will remain on view through January 18, 2015. Says the gallery:

“Sun/Screen is a new project by award-winning New York based artist Penelope Umbrico, which continues her exploration of the ever increasing production and consumption of photographic images online. Umbrico used an iPhone to re-photograph images of the sun she cropped from thousands of sunset images shared on the web.  The process of capturing images directly from the computer screen creates a moiré pattern – an optical illusion, which is the consequence of the pixel grids, meshes or dot patterns being superimposed. As the images dissolve into one another, they draw attention to the materiality of the screen and further distances us from the natural sunlight source of the original images.” 

The project was recently reviewed by the New Yorker, which declared:

“In the group exhibition ‘Social Media,’ at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in 2011, one of the most arresting works on display was Penelope Umbrico’s project ‘Sunset Portraits from 9,623,557 Flickr Sunset Pictures on 8/22/11.’ Umbrico, a New York City-based photographer, had collected a thousand and fifty-eight Flickr photos of people posing in front of the sun, then mounted them in an abstract grid of black silhouettes against colorful backgrounds.

In a new solo exhibition, ‘Sun/Screen,’ at the Photographers’ Gallery, in London, Umbrico further explores her interest in sunset photographs and the ways in which they are shared on the Internet. She used an iPhone to re-photograph images of the sun she found online, and, in the exhibit, she displays them as a single slide show. The dissolve from one image into another enhances the moiré effect of the digital photos, creating what Umbrico calls ‘a virtual window onto a natural world made un-natural.'”

We congratulate Penelope on this wonderful development in her work, and encourage you to see this project – should you find yourself in London this winter. For more information about the artist, or available work, please email info@markmooregallery.com.

This Saturday, December 13th, 2014 (4-6pm), gallery artist Andrew Schoultz will open a solo show of installation and painting at Hosfelt Gallery (San Francisco). Titled “Blown the Bits,” the show debuts vibrant and ambitious new elements in his work that is sure to delight and amaze.

Says the gallery:

Andrew Schoultz’s first solo exhibition at Hosfelt Gallery transforms 7,000 square feet of gallery space with an installation of sculpture, paintings and works on paper that charts a new trajectory in his work.

In this new body of work, Schoultz combines familiar symbols with various conventions of formalism he’s taken from art history to express his dystopian vision. Borders of concentric lines frame these works, representing containment and control while also referring to the margins of Persian miniature paintings and illuminated manuscripts or to modern geometric abstraction. But the frenetic accumulation of lines that make up Schoultz’s narrative imagery explode outward, demolishing the order of the rectilinear composition and shattering the tradition of the picture plane. The title of the show, “Blown to Bits,” alludes to the paradox of positive change – that destruction must precede the creation of something better.

The exhibition will remain on view through January 24, 2015. For more information about the artist, or available works, please email info@markmooregallery.com.