SIMONE SHUBUCK: Do You Like Old Things or New Things That Look Old?

March 14th, 2013

Simone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SIMONE SHUBUCK: Do You Like Old Things or New Things That Look Old? 

April 27 – June 1, 2013

In celebration of the the gallery’s new Culver City location,Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Do You Like Old Things, or New Things That Look Old?, a solo exhibition of new work by New York-based artist Simone Shubuck. The exhibition will run from April 27 – June 1, 2013 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, April 27th from 6 – 8PM.

“Do you like old things, or new things that look old?” is a question Shubuck heard a teenage boy ask his friend many years ago. The idea resonated with her and became the inspiration for this current exhibition. With her new series of energetic works on paper, Shubuck considers our relationship with the past and acknowledges that oftentimes what we think of as “new” are really old ideas re-imagined, recycled or “knocked off.” While the present moment is defined by an ever accelerating pace of innovation, the past is always close at hand providing inspiration and perspective.

Using analog materials of paper, pencil, crayon and paint, the artist communicates using a visual language rooted in floral and plant life. Collaging old drawings, antique photographs and lithographs into the work gives her a path to directly and physically embrace the past. Dense areas of detailed linework and fluid, abstract gestural fields of color create a palpable push and pull in the work. Focusing on this tension makes Shubuck’s latest body of work feel completely new.

Simone Shubuck lives and works in New York City. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993 and has exhibited at numerous galleries included Susie Q. Zurich (Switzerland), Jack Hanley Gallery (San Francisco), Kantor Feuer (Los Angeles) and Zach Feuer Gallery (New York). Her work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This is her first exhibition with Taylor De Cordoba.

JEN PACK: UnQuiet Chroma

December 15th, 2012
Jen Pack - Unquiet Chroma - I Am A Cube

Jen Pack – I am a cube!, 2012 – 58 ½” x 58 ½” x 3 1/2″ – chiffon/thread/wood

JEN PACK: UnQuiet Chroma

November 3 – December 15, 2012

PRESS RELEASE : For Immediate Release

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present UnQuiet Chroma, a solo exhibition of new works by Colorado- based artist Jen Pack. The exhibition will run from November 3 – December 15, 2012 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, November 3rd from 6 – 8PM.

UnQuiet Chroma is a reference to the artist’s unique perception of color. From a young age, Pack sensed she could feel or hear colors, an extra sense beyond the visual. This synesthesia, or union of senses, is undoubtedly a primary motivator for the artist and explains her intense focus on color in her abstract textile collages.

The finished work is the result of dualities in process, materials and perception. It begins with
disassembly and reassembly. The artist starts by machine stitching together strips of vividly-hued chiffon, moshi fabric and cotton. This is a quiet meditative exercise, a process familiar and comfortable for the artist, who grew up seeing her mother and sisters sewing in the home. With so many pieces of varying thicknesses and elasticities sewn together, the result is an unruly assemblage of texture.

Next the artist begins to stretch the fabric onto a wooden frame, a process of intense physicality, yielding sweat, sore thumbs and shoulders for the artist, and sometimes rips and tears for the fabric collage. The stretching begins to tame and smooth out the fabric. Unexpected variations in how sections respond to the force of stretching can create the most interesting parts of the work. Often the piece will require multiple stretchings, until the surface is smooth and the pattern emerges.

The finished work has the appearance of digital pixelation, belying the rigorous and tactile hand-crafted quality of the work. There is a tension as the process emerges as “too clean” and the hand of the artist is superseded by precision. For Pack, it is on that edge where the work “sings”.

Jen Pack lives and works in Durango, Colorado. She received her BFA from Art Center College of
Design in Pasadena, CA in 1997 and her MLIS from San Jose State University in 2008. Reviews of her
work have appeared in New American Paintings, ArtWeek, Art LTD and The Los Angeles Times among
others.

Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 S. La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90036. 310.559.9156

SUMMER SUN: curated by Hadley Holliday

August 24th, 2012

July 14 – August 18, 2012

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Summer Sun, a group exhibition curated by LA-based artist Hadley Holliday including works by Pamela Jorden, Emily Newman, John Pearson and Tyler Vlahovich and Hadley Holliday. The exhibition will run from July 14 – August 18, 2012 with an opening reception on Saturday, July 14th from 6 – 8PM.

In Los Angeles the sun is our constant companion. In summer it screams down from indigo skies commanding us Outside! Rejoice! Recent events have made angelenos more aware than ever of the sun’s presence. In May 2012, the strange twilight of an eclipse cast a lonely shadow over the city. A few weeks later a “little black spot on the sun” reminded us of the sun’s massive girth as Venus, a planet similar in size to the earth, appeared as a tiny speck traversing the sun’s surface.With the passing of the solstice, the days begin to shorten and yet in LA the temperature continues to rise. Contrast increases and shadows darken against the white light of the sun. Mirages transpose images of the sky onto the earth. Venturing into the cool of the gallery, these featured artists meld mystery, beauty, joy and fear into images of our quotidian experience sparkling in the summer sun.

Hadley Holliday’s abstractions flood pigment against a geometric framework to create fluctuating radiant spaces. Pamela Jorden’s paintings contrast soft and hard, fluid and solid with a jubilant interaction of shape and pattern. Emily Newman’s videos explore imagination, legend and utopian aspirations in everyday life. John Pearson’s cyanotypes and videos are meditations on light and shadow, the process a direct translation of sunlight into image. Tyler Vlahovich’s high contrast paintings and idiosyncratic sculptures point to the ritual roots of mark-making.

Taylor De Cordoba is located at 2660 S La Cienega Blvd in Los Angeles, CA and is open from Tuesday – Saturday,11am-5pm. For additional press information, contact Heather Taylor at heather@taylordecordoba.com or (310)559-9156.

CHARLENE LIU: Everywhere Close To Me

June 9th, 2012

April 14 – May 19, 2012

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to present Everywhere Close To Me, Charlene Liu’s third exhibition at Taylor De Cordoba. The exhibition will run from April 14 – May 19, 2012 with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, April 14th from 6 – 8PM.

In her new body of works on paper and panel, Liu manipulates the medium of paper itself to create a series of beautiful yet unsettling abstractions. Along with acrylic airbrush, handmade paper is Liu’s material of choice and she uses delicately pigmented papers to build her collaged works. Armed with an overtly feminine palette of pinks, peaches, mints and violets, the work oscillates between extreme beauty and the saccharin. Through a process of forming paper pulp into shapes and painting with pigmented pulp, Liu cultivates chance and embraces a stylistic looseness that playfully mines painterly traditions.

Drawing from the everyday of her domestic interior and backyard landscape, as well as, chinoiserie and decorative art objects, Liu repeatedly recasts and collides motifs until their specificity collapses and a new world emerges. Clustered plum blossoms lie tangled in a chain link fence as loose abstract marks float through a celestial backdrop. Swooping and drifting the imagery can’t be contained, pushing through entangling lines and the confines of the rectangle. In the larger works, she subverts by piling up delicate motifs and details until they become dominating, even grotesque.

The combined elements create a pictorial space confounding ideas of ornamentation and desire, high and low forms, figure and ground. Repeatedly, Liu walks the line between celebration and critique, as she moves gracefully from imagery to abstraction. The result is a stunning series of imagined landscapes.

Liu lives and works in Eugene, OR where she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon. Born in Taiwan in 1975, Liu received an MFA from Columbia University in 2003 and a BA from Brandeis University in 1997. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, with recent solo exhibitions at Taylor De Cordoba Gallery (Los Angeles), Elizabeth Leach Gallery (Portland, OR), and Shaheen Modern & Contemporary (Cleveland, OH). Her work has been reviewed in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and Flash Art International among others and is included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the New Museum (New York), and the Progressive Art Collection (Cleveland, OH).

HADLEY HOLLIDAY: Warp and Weft

April 7th, 2012

Hadley Holliday
Warp and Weft
February 25 – April 7, 2012

Taylor De Cordoba is proud to present Warp and Weft, a series of abstract paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Hadley Holliday. The exhibition will run from February 25 – April 7, 2012, with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday, February 25 from 6 – 8PM.

For Holliday’s first exhibition at Taylor De Cordoba, the artist debuts a new series of acrylic paintings wherein she explores ideas of space and depth while referencing traditional craft. In striking shades of blue, Holliday creates psychedelic patterns of interlocking circles, which form arched, expansive spaces. The circles mimic overlapping lenses, with each section projecting a different depth of field and creating its own space within the whole. The effect of the pattern is dizzying but also serene, as the varying shades of blue evoke images of the infinite (both the sublime night sky and the mysterious yet inviting sea). Holliday references the history of abstract painting with a fluid style, seemingly pouring colors over the white of the canvas into lines, shapes and patterns. Here, the canvas’ negative space is as important as the color, which rather than staining the canvas, forms a thin film on the surface.

The show’s title, Warp and Weft is an allusion to the weaving, the ancient craft of making fabric by “interweaving” material into a series of right angles. In these paintings, the circles literally weave together into a pattern of geometric shapes. While creating this body of work, Holliday considered the mythology of weaving and the way in which the terminology has become associated with lofty themes of creation and change – spinning the thread of time, the fabric of the universe and yarn as synonym for a tall tale. By using one powerful color and repeating the simple circular shape, Holliday weaves a unique narrative, which invites the viewer into a meditative experience, not unlike the one Holliday enters during the process of painting.

Hadley Holliday lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received her MFA from CalArts in 2004 and has exhibited at numerous galleries including Sam Lee Gallery (Los Angeles) and Solway Jones (Los Angeles). Reviews of her exhibitions have appeared in ArtWeek, The Los Angeles Times and Art LTD, among others.

RECRAFTING HISTORY: history, nostalgia & craft in the American memory, curated by Ellen Caldwell

January 5th, 2012

RECRAFTING HISTORY: history, nostalgia & craft in the American memory

curated by Ellen Caldwell

October 29 – December 22, 2011

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Recrafting History: history, nostalgia, & craft in the American memory, a mixed-media group exhibition curated by Ellen Caldwell.  The exhibition will run from October 29 through December 22, 2011, with an opening reception for the artists on Saturday October 29 from 6-8pm.

“Cultural memory is produced through objects, images, and representations. These are technologies of  memory, not vessels of memory in which memory passively resides so much as objects through which  memories are shared, produced, and given meaning.”

– Marita Sturkin, Tangled Memories

Artists Eric Beltz, Jen Pack, Karen Spector, Frohawk Two-Feathers, and Stephanie Washburn all speak to Sturkin’s concept of a shared history and entangled cultural memory.  Exploring our modern world through a recrafted lens, they create fictitious, re-envisioned, nostalgic, and comical memories and renderings of the past and present. Negotiating themes ranging widely in subject and medium, each artist in Recrafting History answers the question, how do we exhibit histories that we don’t talk about?   In experiencing their art, we as viewers, are welcomed to explore the deeper themes that trouble the American psyche and collective American memory.

With Eric Beltz’s series of graphite-drawn needlework, Beltz calls the concept of Americana and nostalgia into crisis, by recrafting traditional female work (often considered lowbrow), into male-made High Art (with a capital “A”) for the gallery wall.  He appropriates the aesthetic of the craft, but changes the medium and technique, at once reviving and altering the tradition.  Additional textual messages tangle and trouble the subject further.

Built of chiffon, thread, and wood, Jen Pack’s Green Bikini and (k)not Entangled use a deconstructed and reconstructed medium to create a dialogue between the viewer and art.  Her work, though built from the same materials, takes on a transformative air in the final products’ drastically different forms and functions.  And her seemingly disjointed titles are about displacement, and the eternal struggle that comes from deconstructing and reconstructing one’s identity on an ongoing basis.

In Surplus of Light, Karen Spector situates the viewer in an endless video loop that taps into and oscillates from a national post-9/11 fear and insecurity, to a ridiculous feeling of lavishness, abundance, and wealth (found in the extravagant display of fireworks), to a looming uncertainty questioning and undermining American monumentalism and ballsy patriotism.  The reversed anthems are a type of siren song, hovering and looming in the soundtrack as both celebratory and foreboding.

With Frohawk Two-Feathers’ latest installment of the saga of the Frenglish Empire, viewers become part of an exchange between cultural memory and history—between the fictitious Frenglish Company Crocodile and our world, with reality being somewhere in the middle.  His work focuses mainly on the conflict arising from European colonial conquest, though it is shown predominantly in America, thus forcing American audiences to view this work, and this imperialist retelling, as culturally and historically relevant.

Stephanie Washburn’s Margaret Thatcher’s Garden, offers a sneak-peak into the intimate domestic space of a political body.  Through her musings of this imagined realm, we are not just in the midst of a physical interpretation of an exterior location, but are also conceptually in an interior realm of Thatcher herself.  Through something as concrete as a garden, we can re-imagine the historical setting for actual political decisions, while also envisioning Thatcher’s internal, private space of contemplation away from the public eye.

 

KIMBERLY BROOKS: Thread

October 22nd, 2011

 

Kimberly Brooks: Thread

September 10 – October 22, 2011

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Thread, a solo exhibition of new oil paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Kimberly Brooks. The exhibition will run from September 10 – October 22. The gallery will host an opening reception on Saturday, September 10 from 6pm-8pm.

In her latest body of work, Kimberly Brooks continues to explore portraiture, specifically the complexities of representations of female identities. While in her previous series, including Mom’s Friends (2007) and The Stylist Project (2010), the artist used figures to construct narratives, here the female form is part of a broader abstracted landscape. And while earlier portraits boasted an uncanny likeness to their subjects, Brooks’ style has shifted into something that is simultaneously looser and richer. Facial features have been abstracted and bodies distorted. Fashion and costume, a longtime theme for Brooks, is also deconstructed. Once painstakingly rendered folds and drapes have been reduced to their essential shapes and color fields. In these sumptuous new images, Brooks continues to address questions about how we frame beauty, and the phenomenon of fashion as a both pop culture and artistictouchstone. Taken as a whole, the new paintings create a meta-narrative that contemplates “threads” that define, unite and separate us across different cultures and eras.

Kimberly Brooks’ work has been featured in numerous juried exhibitions organized by curators from the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art. Her work has been featured in myriad publications including the Los Angeles Times, Art Ltd., Daily Serving, The Huffington Post, Vanity Fair, Vogue, among others.

 

TIMOTHY HULL: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

July 9th, 2011

Timothy Hull, Here Today Gone Tomorrow

Timothy Hull: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

May 21 – July 9, 2011

hodie adsit, cras absit
-Julius Caesar

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Here Today, Gone Tomorrow, a solo exhibition by New York-based
artist Timothy Hull. The exhibition will run from May 21 through July 9, 2011, with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday May 21 from 6-8pm. This is his third solo show with the gallery.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow consists of drawings, paintings and wall installations addressing the provisional nature of time and history. Hullʼs new work points to the fact that we exist in an eternal present and that what was, no longer is. In addition, the work explores ideas of representation, reproduction, cultural appropriation and recycling. Hull employs motifs from art history’s distant past as well as from 20th century modernism; mixing and matching patterns, colors and styles that create links through time. The artist connects disparate points in time, such as pop culture imagery from 1980′s cause célèbre to rainforest patterns, Boy George, swatch watches, ruins from antiquity and museum displays as well as renaissance consort music. The artist presents many “doubles” or pairings, some nearly carbon copies of each other, and some similar but different. This is meant as a response to the philosophical questions raised by Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas on the nature of being and the essence of things, either real or imagined. The artist employs various artistic mediums, examining concepts such as travel, imperialism, Orientalism, west-meets-east and 1980’s pop imagery. The juxtaposition of discursive imagery and messages from history asks the viewer to consider the factors that led us to this exact moment in time.

Since Timothy Hull’s last exhibition at Taylor de Cordoba his work has been included in group shows in Milan, Italy at La Dictateur Gallery, Rome, Italy at the NOMAS Foundation and in Vienna, Austria at Co-Co. Hull also participated with the group K-48 in the collaborative exhibition “No Soul for Sale” at X-Initiative in New York and the Tate Modern in London. His work has also recently been featured in Flaunt magazine, Dossier Journal, Surface magazine and the New York Times. He has also conducted interviews with other artists for MUSEO magazine, Art in America and the Huffington Post. He recently published a collaborative book of photo-collages with Paul Mpagi Sepuya titled “The Accidental Egyptian and Occidental Arrangements.” He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

FROHAWK TWO FEATHERS: Crocodile Company, Part I. La Guerre Des Machettes Danseuses (The War of The Dancing Machetes)

March 7th, 2011

FROHAWK TWO FEATHERS: Crocodile Company, Part I.  La Guerre Des Machettes Danseuses (The War of The Dancing Machetes)

February 19 through March 26, 2011

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Crocodile Company, Part I.  La Guerre Des Machettes Danseuses (The War of The Dancing Machetes), a new series of mixed media paintings and drawings by Los Angeles-based artist Frohawk Two Feathers. The exhibition will run from February 19 through March 26, 2011, with an opening reception for the artist on Saturday February 19 from 6-8pm. This is his third solo show with the gallery.

Frohawk Two Feathers continues to demonstrate his skill as a master storyteller, spinning tales of colonialism, imperialism and conquest with his wholly unique iconography. Blending his obsession with the history of conflict and pop culture influences from video games, films and TV shows, the artist tells a wartime narrative starring an imagined cast of fascinating characters. Using two classic traditions of both painting and map making, Two Feathers communicates a tragic, yet often humorous story that, through a slight of hand and bristle of the brush retell and reshape historical roles of race, class, and gender. Originally trained in photography, the artist uses elaborately staged photographs of friends and family as the source material for the final portraits on view.

As with his previous bodies of work, each series functions as a chapter in a never-ending tome. Set in 1789 in the Caribbean, “The War of the Dancing Machetes” is a story of assassination, slavery and the fight for power. Deadly clashes between the black ruling class and “The Crocodile Company” (the newly propertied “mulatto” soldiers), drive this story. While these themes of unrest are familiar in art history, Two Feathers approaches his subjects with a keen eye, creating a unique and memorable visual language. And as a viewer immersed in his storytelling, one cannot help but question whether the specifics come from the artist’s mind or straight from the history books. The artist loosely based this series on the actual “War of Knives” that was fought as a precursor to Haitian independence.

KYLE FIELD: Waxing Marks

December 18th, 2010

Taylor De Cordoba is pleased to present Waxing Marks, an exhibition of new works on paper by San Francisco-based artist and musician, Kyle Field. The exhibition will run from November 6 – December 18, 2010.  The gallery will host a reception for the artist on Saturday, November 6.

For his third solo exhibition at Taylor De Cordoba, Field presents a series of ten small ink drawings (approximately 8″ x 10″ each). In his previous body of work, the artist created surreal worlds of fantastical creatures, whose shapes twisted apart and melded together to create intricate yet loose patterns. Here he has stripped away the majority of representational imagery and focuses primarily on richly detailed textural patterns.

The daunting and often humbling task of filling an entire surface motivated Field to produce these dense pieces, which almost completely lack negative space. While referencing the subconscious act of daydream-inspired doodles, he found this kind of drawing to be an exercise in patience. Patterns would form only to fall apart and then form again. Occasional mistakes forced him to retire his intended patterns, as new ones would emerge. The resulting effect is a visual tension between Field’s original road map and the inevitable surprises and unexpected turns he encountered while creating the work.

The title of the exhibition, “Waxing Marks” relates to the artist’s passion for surfing. In these drawings he expertly weaves colors and shapes into patterns that reference the way wax can build up on a surfboard. With a nod towards op-art, magic eye pictures and blotter sheet art, the recognizable images become almost completely phased out. Viewers are left to stare into Field’s intense and often hypnotic designs and form their own meaning.

Kyle Field lives and works in San Francisco, California. His work has been exhibited in numerous venues, including Atelier Cardenas Bellanger (Paris, France), Le Confort Moderne (Poitiers, France), The Palais des Beaux-Arts BOZAR, (Brussels, Belgium), Musée Janisch (Switzerland) Cinders Gallery (Brooklyn, NY) and New Image Art (Los Angeles, CA). He has been featured in Artnet, Artinfo.com, New American Paintings and Le Monde. He also performs as a musician under the name Little Wings. He received his BFA from UCLA in 1997.