FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CARPE CRAS: RYAN WALLACE AND ANDREW SCHOULTZ
October 16 – December 3, 2004
Opening reception: Saturday, October 16, 6-10pm
BLK/MRKT Gallery
310 837 1989, fax 310 815 9078
Contact, Jana DesForges
E-mail, <jana@blkmrkt.com>
Web site, <http://www.blkmrktgallery.com>
Gallery hours, Tuesday through Saturday 11-6pm
Los Angeles — BLK/MRKT Gallery is proud to present CARPE CRAS (seize tomorrow), a two-person show of paintings by Ryan Wallace and Andrew Schoultz. The exhibition opens with a reception on the evening of October 16th, with artists in attendance, and will continue through December 3rd.
Although both artists are contemporaries in age and share several important elements of intention as well as medium, the true impact of seeing their work together derives from their contrasting strategies and their divergent implementations of compatible aesthetic ideas. Both artists use the natural world as starting points in building narrative work with abundant symbolism and accessible relevance to contemporary experience. Both are also engaged in the serious use of drawing within their painting techniques, placing themselves inside the discourse on mark-making and at the intersection of autobiographical and collective experience.
Wallace has a painterly, transparent process. His signature wave patterns lend a gentle, retro feeling to the mostly portrait or landscape compositions, that is both obliquely familiar and comforting and forms a piquant counterpoint to the psycho-sexual and vaguely threatening narratives unfolding in the pictures. There is a deliberately naïve quality to his process; a stylization on the verge of the primitive that is nevertheless clearly the work of an accomplished draftsman adept at showing restraint in his design. He uses large fields of color and thickly applied paint to give a topographical, collage-like appearance to his surfaces. His restrained earthy palette underscores the organic foundation of these stories as well. Wallace’s narratives remain familiar despite the intensely personal meanings contained in the work. Like a dream, this feeling evaporates the more one chases it.
Schoultz also culls his visual lexicon in large part from the natural world; in fact one rarely if ever sees human figures in them. He develops complex relationships between man (through his absences) and nature that are much more contentious than Wallace’s. He is more overtly political where Wallace is almost wistful. He organizes his pictures around central metaphors, depicts scenes that are too far outside the physics of reality to be considered anything less than poetic. He makes thousands of tiny lines in building up the architecture of each composition and he frames each of his images, be it an immense mural or a nearly miniature panel, squarely inside the realm of socio-economic ideas. Schoultz’s intricate, labor-intensive line operates in combination with his high-gloss surfaces and relatively small scale to render each image precious and intensely focused. In his depictions of flocks of birds and floating city blocks, exploding domestic structures and whirlwinds of individual subjects - and in the frenetic quality of the line is itself - lies a metaphor for the fractured, frantic and sophisticated quality of urban life.
Further examination of these two artists in close proximity yields profound material for literary thought as well as aesthetic contemplation. Ryan Wallace delights in inviting the viewer into his world, in sharing with us the tiny details that form his identity and in our understanding of how much we have in common, whereas Schoultz challenges the viewer to reinterpret our own world for ourselves, and to confront our culpability in the sowing of dissent, chaos and entropy in our environment. Wallace uses a rough, fleshy technique to impart a gentle message, and Andrew is nearly the opposite. “I use iconic images to depict the effects of man’s presence in the natural world,” says Schoultz. One can almost say that Wallace instead depicts nature’s effect on man.
Andrew Schoultz lives and works in San Francisco, having received his BFA in illustration from the Academy of Art College there. Ryan Wallace received his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and now lives and works in Brooklyn. Both artists have shown throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia and have been extensively published. They are both still amazingly young to have received so much acclaim and critical attention.
BLK/MRKT Gallery was previously located in the historic Wiltern Theater building and has recently moved into a renovated spice factory at 6009 Washington Blvd., Culver City, 90232. Established in 2001 and run by artist Dave Kinsey and Jana DesForges, BLK/MRKT Gallery has become a premier destination for established and up-and-coming contemporary artists and enthusiasts alike. Previous exhibitions have included Jeff Soto, Ryan McGinness, Evan Hecox, David Choe, WK Interact and Maya Hayuk. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday 11-6pm. <http://www.blkmrktgallery.com>
For more information, or to schedule a private viewing with the artists, please contact Jana DesForges at 310 837 1989 or by email: <jana@blkmrkt.com>
