ORIGIN
SEPTEMBER 25 - OCTOBER 31, 2021
Image courtesy of artist: Brian Caraway, “Apocalypse on Hold”, acrylic on panel 38" x 31"
IDOLWILD gallery is proud to present its first exhibition, Origin, in its new location. This group exhibition will feature the works of Derek Weisberg, Danny Perez, Eric Curtis, Sydney Mills, Brett Amory, Brian Caraway, Lucien Shapiro and Nate Zoba.
Who’s to say when something begins or ends? The arc can be vast. For its gallery launch, IDOLWILD explores the ideas of Origins. To start something new does not necessarily mean to start from conception. It is possible to continue with something new by using revision in order to redirect what you’re trying to convey. In the end, what is most compelling is the story, and how that narrative plays out from its inception. The content will reflect and reveal your unique vision. With this, IDOLWILD asks artists to examine their truths by submitting works that they feel expresses their ‘Origin’ and what they feel fits within the framework of this idea. Discussions on origin can take many forms, including a new, former or ongoing series of art works.
Brian Caraway describes his studio practice as on a path, charting a course toward an imagined intersection of past and present, where the language of hard-edged abstraction pioneered in the 1960s meets the shapes and rhythms of daily life today.
Caraway explains, ”I like to think of my work as analogous with the language of music and geometry. Like these languages, my work takes the form of a nonverbal expression inspired by naturally occurring patterns and rhythmic phenomena. With hard-edged abstraction as the voice to express this language, every stroke and proportion needs to be considered for me to feel a painting is complete.”
In keeping with this approach, Caraway’s practice comprises both a steady visual discipline as well as a sense of fun and light-heartedness. The artist explains, “Like Lee “Scratch” Perry blowing smoke into the tape reels while recording in an effort to achieve a certain inexplicable effect, I too want some of the freewheeling pleasure I feel in making each work to come through in its final state. The liberty I take with titles reflects this enjoyment. For my titles I borrow phrases from song lyrics or titles and passages from books and film I find inspirational, connecting my studio practice to the universe of colors and rhythms that surrounds us.”
Sydney Mills is an artist working within the mediums of video, photography and sculpture. She aims to create work that asks viewers to contemplate speculative fictions about the human condition and the larger humanistic, societal and psychological implications of bodily plasticity, modification and commodification.
She received her MFA in Photography & Media from California Institute of the Arts in 2018 and her BA in Fine Art from the University of Southern California in 2010.
Mills has shown work internationally at the Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore, Semperdepot (Vienna, Austria), and Busan Photo Fair (Busan, South Korea), and in numerous group shows at Los Angeles based art spaces, including The Box, Noysky Projects, Keystone Gallery, and Monte Vista Projects. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
Brett Amory (b. 1975) is an Oakland-based artist whose work is rooted in ordinary perceptual experience. He uses painting and installation to explore small observations that register as fleeting moments. Amory’s work explores peripheral zones of perception, social realities, the passage of time, and the unexceptional phenomena of daily existence.
His work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally, including the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh; Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana; and the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. He was an artist in residence at San Francisco’s de Young Museum in 2017. Amory earned a MFA from Stanford University and a BFA from the Academy of Arts University. He lives and works in Oakland California.
A graduate of Literature from University of Illinois, then achieving his Masters in Creative Writing at North Western, Nate Zoba has spent the last decade studying painting and formulating his technique. He states, “In my painting, I combine the material qualities of oil paint and methods from poetic composition to create sublime surfaces that are both subtle and intricate. The shapes and forms allude to syntax, rhythm, and diction. Like poems, the paintings resist singular interpretation and are in flux. One of my driving concerns is manifesting a sense of harmony within unstable systems.
This current body of work continues in gesturing towards bilateral symmetry, a myth of the human body. Mathematical divisions of planes allude to equal halves, to a middle. Unknowable layers of paint build up in apparent, but fragile equilibrium. But these paintings, like human bodies, are not symmetrical, and are different in their halves. Left and right sides are not identical or not reflections of each other. Like bodies, they are unstable but reach for harmony.
Danny Perez is a first generation, Cuban-American currently based in Los Angeles. Having grown up in the Washington DC area, Perez attended NYU’s Tisch school for film before relocating to California. In 2016 ANTIBIRTH starring Natasha Lyonne and Chloe Sevigny was released and distributed by IFC midnight after premiering at the Sundance Film Festival. Perez wrote and directed ANTIBIRTH after years of working in music videos and experimental video.
Previously in 2010, his experimental video ODDSAC screened in the Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontiers section. The visual album was a collaboration between Perez and the group Animal Collective. Touring as a projectionist and lighting designer for the bands Panda Bear and Black Dice mutated his sense of rhythm and composition into something modern and unique. Perez has worked closely with Panda bear across many tours creating visuals and lighting designs for his concerts across clubs , festivals and museums.
Danny’s video work has been screened and covered all over the world from the Guggenheim Museum (as part of their 50th anniversary series), The National Institute of Art Copenhagen, Reykjavik Int. Film Festival, Karlovy Vary Film Festival, the New York Times, Vice Magazine, and more.
Lucien Shapiro led a participatory performance at ARVIA during the New Moon, inviting you to observe and set free personal bounds from the past to move forward with fresh beginnings. On this evening, accompanying sounds were in collaboration with local artist and sound healer Grace Oh.
This cycle began in the Southwest desert lands of Marfa, Texas, where Lucien led a performance during the October Full Moon after a 5 week privately funded residency. To mark points of protection, he constructed "Dust Cages" from local and primarily organic materials, as well as his own costume made of dried Yucca pods and branches. These objects traveled with Lucien to Los Angeles where he reworked them into the ARVIA landscape, created new pieces and elemental implements of fire, water and seeds in preparation for the evening New Moon performance.
Lucien Shapiro holds space in the parameters of his art practice through the making of objects, performance and installation to embolden people to realize their own power and strength in healing themselves. Lucien lives and works everywhere.
Words by Anne Marie Taylor
Originally from Albuquerque, New Mexico, Eric Curtis moved to Los Angeles, California where he graduated from the American Film Institute (AFI). His trademark dramatic lighting techniques has led him to photograph such Hollywood notables as David Lynch, Morgan Freeman, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, rocker Tommy Lee, the bands My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park and rapper Method Man.
Eric’s unique approach to photography emphasizes bringing studio lighting to the outside world, which allows him to dictate the terms of the environment he’s shooting. Fallen Superheroes, a 342 page photo-fiction, published by Medallion Media Group, is Eric’s vision brought to life through his lens accompanied by the unique storytelling of authors Scott Allen Perry and Adam Mock, whom he also collaborated with on his other IPPY Bronze Award book, “Mime Very Own Book”, featuring “Pans Labyrinth” and the “Shape of Water” actor, Doug Jones.
Derek Weisberg, was born in 1983. He began sculpting at a very early age starting with the medium of mashed potatoes as soon as he could hold a fork and knife, moving onto action figure assemblage when he could load a hot glue gun, and at age 7 he transitioned into the medium of ceramics, which was the beginning of his lifelong love and ultimate passion. He unwaveringly pursued ceramics sculpture throughout his childhood and teens, in Benicia, CA, where he was raised. At age 18 he moved to Oakland, CA, to pursue his love for ceramics and art in general and attended California College of Arts and Crafts. At CCAC he received several awards and graduated with high honors in 2005 with a BFA. Since then Weisberg has co-owned his own gallery, Boontling Gallery, as well as curated numerous other shows. He has also worked with highly esteemed artists such as Stephen De Staebler, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Manuel Neri, and many others. In addition Weisberg has maintained a strong and demanding studio practice, exhibiting regionally, nationally, and internationally. Weisberg has participated in over 90 shows in the last 8 years, and there are no signs of slowing down in the future. Weisberg currently lives and works in NY and is faculty at Greenwich House Pottery.
Show will run: Sept. 25-Oct.31, 2021
Wed-Sat 12pm-6pm & by appointment.
Opening Reception: Saturday, Sept.25, 2021
Start Time: 5pm End Time: 9pm
338 S. Avenue 16, unit A4, Los Angeles, CA 90031
