Appeared in chinatown with in 20 minutes, probably destroyed in the next hour
Crisp London Los Angeles presents new work by L.A. based Nathan Danilowicz.
Amsterdam Quaternities (London) and All Internal (Los Angeles) are exhibited concurrently in either city, overlapping concepts and aesthetics.
Amsterdam Quaternities celebrates the completion of 1000 intimate geometric ink drawings all by the same name starting in 2002. The exhibition includes a multitude of 3” x 3” drawings, made intuitively as a daily ritual. The black lines on white paper are delicate and flawless, partial to a lithograph or an etching. They explore the balance or imbalance between symmetry and asymmetry, whether it be reflective or rotational, originating in a dream of a shifting geometric shape. The drawings transcend from the initial dream into parallels between Jungian theory and the idea of the “Quaternity” which underscore their spiritual qualities. “Amsterdam Quaternities” is in the context of Chaos Magic–an individualized and fluid form of neoshamanism. The most recent drawings, starting with #901, were made to be sigils—symbols of magic created to enact change. A triptych of color photographs accompany the display as performative documents of the interaction with Death in Amsterdam.
All Internal features work which articulates Danilowicz’s admitted hypocritical dilemma and increasingly introspective practice. Personal experiences are recounted via image, text and video, appropriated and generated by the internet. For this exhibition, light-jet prints are mounted on anodized aluminum in shapes similar to sigils; communicating ethical dichotomies or paradoxical experiences while under the influence of psychoactive substances. Minimal and slightly horror vacui, they read like fables or parables while following in the tradition of classical genre painting: still life, landscape, portraiture; evoking addiction, surgery and intercourse. Two new video works are featured in the east gallery alongside the exhibition. Suicide Note is generated by an online interface. It creates a humorous and frighteningly sincere suicide note, equivocal to whom the sender is. With communication becoming more like entertainment, a serious message can no longer be taken seriously when considering the influx of media, electronic gadgets and prescription drugs. (d)Effective Download further distracts the viewer, made of downloaded pornography—muddled with artifacts—distorted as a result of encoding or compression. The effect is that of sexuality and flesh morphing together and pulling apart, becoming lost and confused in an orgy of digital obfuscation.
Nathan Danilowicz received his MFA in New Genres from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2007. Group exhibitions include the Santa Monica Museum of Art, Cirrus Gallery, Telic Arts Exchange, Raid Projects all in Los Angeles, Locust Projects in Miami, Black Pussy with Jason Rhoades and an upcoming residency at the McDowell Colony this fall. He is a contributing writer for ArtUS magazine and lives in Los Angeles.
Crisp London Los Angeles
1355 Westwood Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90024
3 Newman Passage Fitzrovia, London WC1
www.crisplondonlosangeles.com
Waylon Dobson, Kip Fulbeck, Eric Johnson, Adam Schwartz, Jay Stuckey and Jonathan Wellerstein
Dates: May 1–May 24, 2008
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 1, 6-9 pm
AndrewShire Gallery presents Inner Battles of the Imaginary Male, a group exhibition by artists Waylon Dobson, Kip Fulbeck, Eric Johnson, Adam Schwartz, Jay Stuckey and Jonathan Wellerstein whose drawings, paintings, photographs and sculptures explore the hairline links of stability to unrest.
During one of his talks, J. Krishnamurti once asked his audience: “What is the cause of the disorder in which we live?” Within a heartbeat he answered, “It’s very simple. There must be conflict as long as there is division. When I accept authority there is violence. There is conflict.” Inner Battles addresses some of the central conflicts that evolve when one assigns authority to another or when one assumes authority over others by creating division. For the purpose of this exhibition, the “other” can be just one more self-personality observed by a different delegated self in attendance as our decision maker.
Waylon Dobson’s ceramic reconstructions of war toys, work tools and ruling class relics operate in a way that facilitates the study of authority and conflict by positing new connotations to challenge traditional ones. He bolts together loose glazed and bisque-fired elements that leave us feeling vulnerable to the sheerness of human existence and its reality as possible illusion.
Kip Fulbeck’s photographs survey the actions, instincts and reactions that motivate marking the human body with ink. He hunts the male psyche through tattoos which are outward expressions of the complexities and fleeting insecurities core to being human in a screwed up society. Anyone who has been tattooed possesses his private reasons for supporting body ink, and Fulbeck allows for his subjects to enter the conversation on their own terms through the written word.
Eric Ernest Johnson’s paintings show a sweetened side of colonization and oppression in a firmly naïve style. He renders designated losers who might appear weak, even comic, to those assuming dominance, but the realities of civilization show the weak and strong to be inventions born of mortal fear traced to the power of the natural world. Johnson’s paintings illuminate the slippage between the desire to control and the unimagined resultant fates confining both the colonizer and the de-colonized.
Adam Schwartz’s charcoal and pencil drawings depict helicopters frozen in a states prompting neither motion nor development. Some seem to be caught between hanging stalactites and stalagmite formations. But this method of materializing the synchronicities between one thing and another can be envisioned by connecting symbols of failed power (crashed police helicopters) to invisible particles streaming across intergalactic flatlands to where someone dreams of soaring in a gyrating machine.
Gallery hours: Tues-Sat 11-6 pm ● www.andrewshiregallery.com
Connie and I found a free photo booth, so how can we resist creating an animation? The only thing preventing us was the que that circled around the booth and occasional visitors who poped in... 
What I really wanted was a picture of people lounging in Kendell Carter's pieces later in the evening at the Marilyn and Larry Fields Collection.
Walked to the Millennium Park one morning, this was taken at 7am in the underbelly of the big metal bean...can you see me?