"California Maximalism" Exhibition

Nyehaus

poster for "California Maximalism" Exhibition

This event has ended.

California Maximalism: Sticking a Spike into the Vein of Memory

Quite a squad of soldiers has been holding the front line of Maximalism for the last 50 odd years. With the exception of that prick / mastermind Bruce Conner, the show focuses on practitioners from roughly three generations that made / make work in Los Angeles.

Those Geniuses at Ferus Gallery somehow created visual peace between Robert Irwin and Ed Kienholz. They define Maximalism antithetically to Minimalism as work that through an intuitive composing of materials at first appears to spiral out of control; but ultimately while flirting with compositional anarchy have a formal classicism. Jackson Pollock could be described as the first maximalist. In music it would be the Sex Pistols; literature, Bataille; cinema, Pasolini or Russ Meyers. Maximalism has survived disco Mohawks, flannel shirts and Britney Spears. Unlike their minimalist counterparts, this group derives no pleasure from the pink haze washing over sunsets, the azure color of the Pacific or the expansive desert. Darkness and claustrophobia doesn’t have the same sexy ring as “light and space.” This exhibition unleashes the dark twisted souls of 24 “Maximalists”:

Founding Bastards: Ed Kienholz, Bruce Conner, Wallace Berman, John Altoon, George Herms, David Hammons; Eternal Juvenile Delinquents: Paul McCarthy, Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, Chris Burden and Richard Jackson; Bad Seeds: Jason Meadows, Tim Hawkinson, Cameron Jamie, Elliott Hundley, Aaron Curry, Thomas Houseago, Jason Rhoades, Gerlad Davis, Mark Gonzales, Matthew Monahan, Sterling Ruby, Rob Reynolds and Julie Becker.

They are a loaded gun with a loose trigger stuffed absentmindedly in a waistband. The labyrinth of connections between these artists takes us from the most elegant formalism of composition to the darkest (humorous) possible recesses (and the recesses of recesses) of the human imagination. It is the gluttony of gesture, the intensity of image / material selection, the alienation / ignorance (is bliss) / disdain of East Coast didacticism.

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