During the week of February 15th, Los Angeles was a host to a
total of 6 art fairs throughout the city. The crown jewel was Frieze, an
international art fair which has iterations in London, and New York. With a total of 70 galleries, and site-specific
installations in the backlot of Paramount Studios, this was the first year that
Frieze was in Los Angeles. Despite the rain and cold weather, people
flocked to see Frieze Los Angeles. Each of the booths at Frieze gave the viewer something to love. From Anri Sala's self-playing drums to
Cindy Sherman's iconic photography, Frieze offered something for everyone. The
best galleries were the ones that offered solo presentations. The Hauser and
Wirth's presentation of Mike Kelly's "Unisex Love Nest"
installation was both brilliant and disturbing; Mike Kelley at his best. Spruth
Mager's booth had an intimate presentation of small paintings by Karen
Kilimnik. The red walls extenuated the color and subject matter of each of the
works. The paintings portrayed castles, princesses and horses; the subject
matter of fantasy. One of the best discoveries at Frieze were the paintings of
Hugh Steers at the Alexander Gray Associates booth. Hugh Steers was a New York
painter who tragically died of HIV/AIDS in 1995. The figurative works explore
the taboo subject matter of queer identity and homo-eroticism. The composition
has the intimacy of a Paul Cadmus or Edward Hopper or even his contemporary
Eric Fischl, but without the jadedness. Despite their intimacy, Steers' art was
bold for his time. These were definitely one of the highlights at Frieze.
LA Louver's booth was probably the best exclusively Los
Angeles based gallery to show at Frieze. LA Louvre showed Guijin Fujita, whose
extraordinary works combine both traditional Japanese painting with LA graffiti
art. Almine Rech had a wonderful presentation of the abstract
expressionist/color field painter Vivian Springford who was one of the featured
artists in "The Women of Abstract Expressionism" exhibition at the
Palm Springs Art Museum in 2017. Matthew Marks gallery had an amazing showing
of Ken Price's ceramics and works on paper. Price's work was surprising, and
humorous in their color and subject matter. Another great booth was David Kordansky, which featured the work of Kathryn Andrews. Other notable galleries with a
great selection of works include Metro Pictures, OMR, Massimo De Carlo, White
Cube, Blum and Poe, and kurimanzutto.
Outside of the galleries, the backlot presented some truly
amazing and provocative installations and outdoor sculpture. Sarah Cain's
installation "I touched a cactus flower" was a delightful celebration
of color and light within brownstone backlot. Catherine Czudej "Waiting
for Jimmy Hoffa" was a sad allegory of the sad fate of labor unions and
the labor movement. Paul McCarthy's "Daddies Tomato Ketchup
Inflatable" and the video inside the prop building "Bossie
Berger" offers a decadent view of food and consumerist culture. The outdoor
installations of Hannah Greely "High and Dry" and Trulee Hall's
"Infestation" effectively uses the studio backlot and the prop set to
create sites of fantasy that correspond to the specific Paramount Pictures lot.
The most effective and the best of the outdoor installations is Karon Davis'
"Game," which was curated by Ali Subotnick. Three white plaster
figures, two standing and one sitting, stand in front of the Martin Luther King
Jr. Academy. The figures are African American, and they stand outside struggling
to maintain their humanity as they are becoming prey. Davis is making a
provocative statement on the state of school violence, where schools have
become the hunting grounds for guns and active shooters. Davis's installation
is deeply moving and provocative. Definitely one of the best of Frieze.
Upon looking at the works sold and those who purchased the
works, it looks like the purchasers were mainly from outside of California or
even the United States. I am glad that this year's
Frieze in Los Angeles was a success and it will more likely be back in 2020. My only problem
is that the purchases did not benefit Los Angeles' institutions and
collections. (Maybe I am wrong. I hope that I am). Did the Hammer Museum,
LACMA, MOCA or others including the well-known collectors in Southern
California purchase works? The Mike Kelley installation was purchased by a
foundation in Europe. I wish that it could've remained here in Los Angeles, the
hometown of Mike Kelley. I am hoping that Frieze in the future will bring in
more local collectors and institutions so that the community will eventually
benefit. I am also happy that the backlot exhibited the best emerging and
established artists from Los Angeles. The backlot was truly enjoyable. Frieze
was a triumph and it looks like the other art fairs also benefited from this
fair. It appears that Frieze has a great future in Los Angeles.
Trenton Doyle Hancock: An Ingenue’s Hues and How to Use Cutty Black Shoes January 5 - February 17, 2019
Story time with Trenton Doyle Hancock: Saturday January 5th, 4:30-6pm
Public reception to follow from 6-9pm
Shulamit Nazarian is pleased to present An Ingenue’s Hues and How to Use Cutty Black Shoes, Houston-based artist Trenton Doyle Hancock’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles. The new drawings, paintings, and sculptures in this show expand upon the artist’s saga of The Moundverse, a constructed world that has propelled his artistic practice for the past twenty-five years.
In addition to the narrative tradition of his religious upbringing, Hancock immersed himself in graphic novels, comics, and Greek mythology; at the age of ten, he began creating characters as articulations of his experience as a Black youth in small-town Paris, Texas. In The Moundverse, Hancock has developed an extensive cast: altruistic Mounds, destructive Vegans, and mutated Bringbacks; TorpedoBoy is a tragically flawed hero who serves as the artist’s alter ego; Undom Endgle is a color-wielding goddess who protects young souls, representing the force of the Black women who have affected and supported Hancock over the years. These characters and others explore timeless polarities like good and evil alongside related issues of race, class, identity, politics, and social justice.
Using the fantastical to grapple with the deeply personal has long been at the core of Hancock’s artistic practice. Formally, this is seen in what the artist calls his “rough and tumble” aesthetic: Richly colored tactile surfaces are loaded with objects that range from bottle caps that the artist played with in childhood to bits and pieces of older works that have been rebirthed to create something entirely new. Drawing heavily from the temporal structure of comics, Hancock’s practice seamlessly weaves storylines spanning long periods of time, often within a single artwork. The totality of his practice can be seen as an ever-expanding graphic novel in its own right, articulated through a variety of media.
Laced with personal memoir, Hancock’s Moundverse is a metaphorical space that reflects the everyday world. Several works show TorpedoBoy in mid-stride, clad in football gear, wearing his “cutty black shoes” as he runs from evil-natured Vegans that at times take the aggregated form of a goofy-footed, cloaked member of the Ku Klux Klan (the Paris, Texas, of Hancock’s youth had an active Klan). The malignant force that reaches for this distraught—albeit defiant—central character points to longstanding concerns of systematic racism and oppression.
The exhibition also includes Hancock’s most recurring character, The Mound—a half-plant, half-animal creature that absorbs and processes negative human emotions to bring positive energy to the world. Presented within the exhibition will be two large-scale paintings of Mounds, one standing nearly eight feet tall. In addition, Hancock will present new ink-on-paper works that introduce the first chapter of the artist’s most ambitious drawings to date: Trenton Doyle Hancock Presents The Moundverse. Designed as a traditional graphic novel, this series offers a sequential understanding of the characters and stories that have dominated Hancock’s practice for the past two and a half decades.
An Ingenue’s Hues and How to Use Cutty Black Shoes continues the artist’s exploration of primal forces as they play out in The Moundverse, reflecting our current moment and inviting viewers to consider parallel themes and stories in the world around us today.
Trenton Doyle Hancock (b. 1974, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) grew up in Paris, Texas. Hancock was featured in the 2000 and 2002 Whitney Biennial exhibitions, becoming one of the youngest artists in history to participate in this prestigious survey. In 2014, his exhibition Skin & Bones: 20 Years of Drawingwas presented at the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, and traveled to Akron Art Museum; the Studio Museum in Harlem; and Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. A solo exhibition of his work, Mind of the Mound: Critical Mass, will open at MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts, in 2019. His work has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at The Ringling Museum of Art; The University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum; The Savannah College of Art and Design; The Weatherspoon Museum; The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; The Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami; Institute for Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania; Olympic Sculpture Park at the Seattle Art Museum; Fruitmarket Gallery; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Hancock’s world has also been translated into performance in the original ballet Cult of Color: Call to Color, commissioned by Ballet Austin; and into site-specific murals for the Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Dallas and at the Seattle Art Museum’s Olympic Sculpture Park.
The artist’s work is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum; The Studio Museum in Harlem; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Baltimore Museum of Art; Columbus Museum of Art; The Contemporary Museum, Honolulu; The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum; Dallas Museum of Art; High Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art; Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; Andy Warhol Museum; and Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University.
January 5 - February 9 Opening Reception: Saturday January 5, 6-8pm
Klowden Mann is proud to present David Lloyd’s 365 A Year of Drawing, the Los-Angeles based artist’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition consists of 365 mixed-media drawings on paper, spanning the gallery in large clusters according to the date they were made. The show will be on view from January 5th to February 9th, with an opening reception on Saturday January 5th from 6-8pm.
For each day of the 2018 calendar year, Lloyd created one drawing; usually completed in the afternoon, each work was executed on the same spot on his Santa Monica studio wall. Lloyd used social media as a documentation process, with no text or description to accompany the images other than the date. The resulting body of work is one he sees less as a cohesive series, and instead more as a ritualistic meditation on making space for daily creative and intuitive action. As he says, “While there is clearly a connection, I started out the idea that each piece was a brand new drawing… It’s almost the opposite of working on a preconceived project, because here the project is the action of working on a drawing a day and letting those drawings be what they are when made in one go—to not go back.”
The idea for the process came out of Lloyd’s experience with meditation, and his understanding of its insistence on utilizing the discipline of daily action to empty out the internal human dialogue in order to create space to receive. The process also came from personal need: “I have a kind of creative overload that can’t get expressed through planning—maybe it’s kind of attention problem, but it is a need to get what is inside of my head out. And what comes out are I think pretty inventive abstractions. When I work this way, abstraction is what comes out- it’s my natural state.”
That said, the drawings are also referential, frequently looping back to landscape, figure, still life and architecture. Lloyd’s work has consistently ridden the line between categories of abstraction and representation, dismissing purity of form in either realm. Graduating with a BFA from CalArts in 1985, Lloyd was picked up by Margo Leavin Gallery, and became known for a series of intelligent, near-humorous abstractions that quickly entered the market. The visual language he created in the Los Angeles art scene of the 1980’s remained a clear ground for his formal vocabulary, even as he chose to begin incorporating representational imagery—a choice he says he made after the Los Angeles riots in 1992 made him feel that he needed to speak about the world more directly. In the time since he has moved back and forth between these languages fluidly, with signature compositional assurance, anthropomorphic treatment of form, and representational references that exist somewhere between nature and theory.
David Lloyd graduated with a BFA from CalArts in 1985, and began his career with a series of intelligent, near-humorous abstractions, turning towards the incorporation of imagistic referents several years later. He has shown in California at Klowden Mann, Otis College of Arts and Design, Margo Leavin Gallery, Gallery Paule Anglim and the Orange County Museum of Art, along with many others, as well Metro Pictures, and Milk Gallery in New York. His work has been written about extensively, and he is included in the collections of the Orange County Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego and the Getty.
Klowden Mann 6023 Washington Blvd. Culver City, CA 90232 http://klowdenmann.com/
