The Ocular Bowl: Alex Olson, Agnes Pelton, Linda Stark & The Diet: Michael Bell-Smith
April 2–May 28, 2016
Kayne Griffin Corcoran
1201 South La Brea Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present The Ocular Bowl, featuring works by Alex Olson, Agnes Pelton, and Linda Stark. The show brings together work by three cross-generational artists concentrating on ideas of vision and how it occurs beyond the eyes alone. Each artist brings a specific perspective to ideas of sight, from the physical act of seeing to inward and metaphysical explorations of mind and memory. The exhibition begins with historical works from the 1920s by painter Agnes Pelton and traverses through contemporary works by Alex Olson and Linda Stark. This will be the first time each artist has exhibited with the gallery.
The Ocular Bowl examines vision through physical manifestations of light and sight lines, metaphorical symbolism, and transcendental themes. The idea of the ocular bowl acts a metaphor for the overflowing basin of the eye that collaborates with other faculties to bring about vision. The imagery of the bowl also relates to Agnes Pelton’s use of receptacles to represent the mind or body, Alex Olson’s “mind’s eye” vessels, and Linda Stark’s potion paintings in which paint acts as the container for the spell’s ingredients.
Each artist has her own relationship to alternative forms of vision; they examine the conditions of sight through optical manipulation, light traversing paintings, and blurred use of abstraction and representation.
Agnes Pelton was a founding member of the Transcendental Painting Group (TPG), a loosely organized circle of non-representational artists active in the Southwest during the late 1930s and early 1940s. Alex Olson has produced five new paintings that continue an exploration on the expanded idea of sight. Each painting embodies a different experience of seeing: moving through light, engaging focus, testing metaphors, and self-imposed “blindness.” Linda Stark has pursued a shifting set of overlapping oeuvres, from figural “fleshscapes,” to textured abstractions, to magic potion sculptural concoctions. Concept and process are aligned as she investigates the physical properties of oil paint, building the paintings over a slow process of dripping and layering.
In the South Gallery, Kayne Griffin Corcoran is pleased to present The Diet, Michael Bell-Smith’s first solo exhibition with the gallery and in Los Angeles.
The Diet uses the ideals of regimented eating habits as its catalyst. At its core, a diet is what one consumes to achieve a desired effect. It is often driven by trends and constantly changing. Working across video, vinyl paintings and custom software, Bell-Smith has produced three different series under the umbrella of these intersecting ideas.
Bell-Smith revisits his 2012 work De-Employed. The original video was created from a selection of templates used by creative professionals to create slideshows or promotional videos. Recombining elements from these templates, Bell-Smith created an 18 second loop of movement and transition. He expanded this project with a new video, De-Employed_2016, which utilizes the same template structure but with new, “updated” media. Bell-Smith’s act of re-versioning the original amplifies the work’s investigation into how structure shapes meaning. He looks at the aging qualities in digital forms, while reflecting on the short life-span of aesthetics and visual meaning.
New vinyl paintings use the decorative motif of the metal stud, an object generally associated with punk rock culture, but which has more recently been adopted by mainstream fashion to reference an attitude of rebellion. Bell-Smith reduces the stud to a graphic icon. Bell-Smith’s interest in forms of mass cultural visuals extends to the material and process of the work’s construction. Each painting starts as a digital image and is translated to a vinyl cutter piece by piece.
The four works in the “Flames Clock” series represent the fourth iteration of Bell-Smith’s larger clocks series started in 2012. In each piece, the artist combines a seamless video loop with a custom piece of software that tells the time via a floating clock. In the works, the mesmerizing seduction of a video loop is paired with the utility and potential anxiety of the present, real world time.
Michael Bell-Smith is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Semiotics from Brown University in 2001. His work has been exhibited internationally, including MoMA PS1, New York; The New Museum, New York; Foxy Production, New York; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Museum of Modern Art, New York.
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