Joe Sola "The Senior Discount"
Blackston
This event has ended.
Blackston presents "The Senior Discount", Los Angeles-based conceptual artist Joe Sola's solo exhibition of new video work, paintings and drawings.
In conjunction with the exhibition, the gallery has produced a 98-page catalogue of the artist's work with an essay by Toby Kamps, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection.
Sola's latest video work, paintings and drawings further his exploration of the role of the artist in the documentation of, participation in and critical reflection on cultural dynamics and polemics. Paintings of a Vietnam War scene on a big toe, Colonel Sanders with an enlarged body part and President Obama's hand presenting a business card, among a broader examination of power, form a body of work that captures the horrendous, the ironic and the profound - all from Sola's absurdist point of view.
Sola's larger oil paintings in the show include renderings of an American art storage facility, an abstracted boardwalk with a cash machine spewing cash and a limp-wristed hand holding a cigarette with the text "Are you from Hollywood" above it. Sola combines abstract and realist styles along with text to explore personal and cultural psychological minefields with acuity and humor.
Nothing is off limits In Sola's practice. In Sola's exhibition video, some blood of an artist (2011), a lone male figure engages in grotesque and violent acts on corpses, all played by Sola, transforming body parts into paintings and sculptures, that illuminate the artist's position towards abstract art, American popular cinema, and a Red Bull-driven political economy. The video, inspired by two books, American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis and Guide by Dennis Cooper, is Sola's most articulate foray into the relationship between creativity and violence.
Joe Sola received his BA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and his MFA from Otis College of Art and Design.
[Image: Joe Sola "Vietnam war scenes" (2011) oil on canvas 18 x 20 3/4 in.]
Media
Schedule
from October 30, 2011 to December 18, 2011
Reception For The Artist on 2011-10-30 from 16:00 to 20:00