Sea Change
September 9 – October 14, 2006
Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles, CA.
Artists included: Jimmy Baker, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Lionel Estève, Thomas Kiesewetter, Faris McReynolds, Ellen de Meutter, Adam Pendleton, Peter Rogiers
Press Release & Info
Roberts & Tilton is pleased to announce Sea Change, an exhibition of recent works by Jimmy Baker, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Lionel Estève, Thomas Kiesewetter, Faris McReynolds, Ellen de Meutter, Adam Pendleton and Peter Rogiers. This unique and prolific group of international artists reflects the broad tendencies of the international marketplace. Each artist contributes contemporary ideas of three-dimensionality in painting and sculpture, while new power and old ideas re-circulate. Sea Change highlights modernity as the agency of transition, but notes that while moving forward, perpetual historical elements continue to be incorporated into contemporary artwork.
Jimmy Baker (United States) combines painting, photography and installation to address the role media spectacle plays in distorting our perception of events and human tragedy. His paintings mix disaster-laden images from mass media with technically refined photorealist painting, which he employs to challenge the grim reality presented on the evening news with an equal sense of the surreal. Abraham Cruzvillegas (Mexico), recent winner of the Calder award, has recently completed his residency in Paris. The flotsam and jetsam of Paris life continues to influence Cruzvillegas’ interests in poetry, gaming, conceptualism and chance. Conventional and philosophical traditions, combined with physics and metaphysics produce the ephemeral results of Lionel Estève’s (France) work. Estève brings to the fore the beauty of everything physical. In his first foray into bronze, Thomas Kiesewetter (Germany) continues to be most interested in how a seemingly permanent material can be rendered with the subtly and evocation of a drawing. Since his acclaimed solo exhibition “Oh, Dead Air,” in March 2006, Faris McReynolds (United States) continues to paint his re-interpretation of cinematic stills—this time, in watercolor. Unlike the
texturized and actively expressive nature of his large-scale oil paintings, McReynolds’ large-scale watercolors are delicate, painted with a careful sensitivity that focuses on inward contemplation, rather than outward physicality. Ellen de Meutter (Belgium) has re-categorized her own personal archive of images, shapes and colors to forge a new and fascinating utopia, where a car crash is on equal footing with boxers in a ring. Continuing his social commentary in the form of silk-screened canvases, Adam Pendleton (United States) focuses on throwaway tabloid culture, where celebrities are glorified, immortalized and mirrored. Pendleton has become an extension of what was started by Duchamp and continued with Warhol. Peter Rogiers’ (Belgium) interest in the figure and its many physical permutations redefines the characteristics of movement and space to create works that are both vivid and haunting, yet ultimately, sublime.