NYAB Event - David Korty Exhibition

David Korty Exhibition

Wallspace

This event has ended.

Wallspace presents our first solo exhibition with Los Angeles - based artist David Korty. For this exhibition, Korty continues his recent series of Blue Shelf paintings , where hand - drawn or printed objects, figures and abstract fragments are collaged o nto startlingly deep blue grounds , arranged on shelves or stacked in architectural and anthropomorphic compositions. Here, Korty is both creator and curator, selecting from among his own monochromatic ink drawings and screen prints and combining them to form individual wunderkamme r , where personal and cultural artifacts merge to generate new set s of associations. Like a sentence, these layered forms invite the viewer to read as much as look at the paintings.

Language, both visual and epistolary, punctuates the exhibition . In Blue Shelf #32 , the word “STACACCATO” (a play on the word “ s taccato”) is stacked between “CALIFORNIANS” and “SPEED BAAL L,” to form a Towe r of Babel where a structure is built through an accrual of words. Just as “ staccato ” in musical composition is characterized by disconnected elements and represented by a dot, wedge or line, t he forms that comprise Korty’s arrangements seem disparate unti l presented en masse . These components range from Hollywood icons (Isabella Ross e l l i ni is a recurring character) , to sections of textiles that nod both to Korty’s background in printmaking a nd his ongoing work in ceramics, images of local dirt and houses s urrounding the artist’s studio , and details of brushstrokes and scribbles of various styles and size. The combination presents a forensic cross - section of the life of a specific artist working in a spe cific place a t a specific time, while tracing how a per sonal lexicon is developed through parsing both art historical reference and the flotsam of daily life.