TRIALECTICS →

C H R I S T I A N  E C K A R T
T R I A L E C T I C S

May 18 – June 29, 2019    in the MAIN GALLERY

ARTIST RECEPTION Saturday, May 18, 2 – 4 pm

McClain Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Christian Eckart that extend his investigation of the sublime and meta-sublime beyond painting/sculpture hybrids into digital and photographic realms. Eckart's continual explorations are founded in an interrogation of various tropes of 20th Century abstraction, while attempting to delve into underlying imperatives that have persevered in certain types of "art making" since the Renaissance, including a need to address the ineffable and unrepresentable.

The exhibition title Trialectics refers to a triumvirate of concepts: the natural, cultural, and digital worlds. In cutting edge post-modern theory, the term trialectics refers to hybridity and/or interdisciplinary action which in its current usage proposes a kind of unity as in the unification of the mind, body, and spirit.

Eckart’s interest in the reverse engineering of paintings regarding the mechanics of their construction, both representation and non, has been a recurring theme in his work since his first solo exhibitions in New York in the 1980s.  This new work also continues a visual lineage combining elements from previous series including Monochromes, Sacra Conversazione, White Paintings, and the Power Chord Cycles. By using internet sourced stock images in these pieces, he also questions the assumption of authority requisite to authorship. These new concepts addressing the natural, cultural, and digital meet with one of Eckart’s primary interests in his overall artistic career: the articulation of a meta-sublime in the form of constructed paintings. These images of Earth’s ineffable beauty and awesome grandeur have correlations to tropes of the romantic sublime in Western painting – mountains, waterfalls, sunsets, etc. Eckart’s use of a seemingly endless forest scene were inspired by Gustave Klimt’s birch forest paintings which seem to go on infinitely, yet the edges of the picture provide a finite space.

Eckart considers these works to be paintings that represent a new way of picture making in a post-internet era and in the context of virtual reality and artificial intelligence. As Eckart puts it: “The works are meant to demonstrate concerns regarding how the natural, cultural, and digital realms impact and inform one another as a result of their interaction, juxtaposition, collision, and integration.”

WHITE NOISE →

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to announce White Noise, a solo exhibition of new work by Christian Eckart.  

This new series explores climate change as both the subject and object of the pieces. Throughout Eckart’s career he has been interested in the articulation of a meta-sublime in the form of his painting/sculpture hybrids. As he further developed this interconnection and new style of digital work for White Noise, native correlations began to unfold between climate issues and tropes of the romantic sublime in Western painting - e.g.; mountains, waterfalls, sunsets, etc.  

For the works in this exhibition Eckart has digitally voided, with semi-transparent white, much of the beauty found in images very carefully sourced from the internet. The images depict subjects replete with their own iconological arc; originating in 18th and 19th century romantic enlightenment painting, later evolving into primary subject matter at the advent of photography, then to picture postcard fodder in the 20th century, thereafter exploited as backdrops and locations for print and television advertisements and finally as motifs of 21st century Instagram posts.

In White Noise, Eckart is re-presenting romantic sublime imagery for the purpose of reconsidering its primal power specifically in the context of the potential extinction of the human species as a result of climate change. Without humankind, who will be left to appreciate, collect, and share the Earth's ineffable beauty and awesome grandeur? 

The exhibition title is an acknowledgement to the profound impact Don DeLillo's 1985 novel by the same name, and presenting similar undercurrents, had on the artist many years earlier.

Opening reception for Christian Eckart 
Sunday, January 20th 3 - 5pm

Wilding Cran Gallery
939 S Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021
www.wildingcran.com

SPLIT MIRROR. LIGHT. REFLECTION

https://www.schauwerk-sindelfingen.de/en/exhibitions/current-exhibitions/detail_2624.html

Reflective materials accentuate a break in art of the twentieth-century: Since the late 1950s, artists have sought modes of expression that would propagate a renewal in art. Thus, new techniques and materials have found their way into their artworks. The mirror, previously a more symbolically charged motif in painting, was discovered as a material to explore the physical properties and issues of light, time, space, and movement. Particularly the avant-garde ZERO artists with their kinetic-light objects pursued new approaches. Adolf Luther used mirrors and lenses as instruments to make reflected light visible. Otto Piene presented light as a design element which activates the actual artwork via reflection, whereas Michelangelo Pistolettos mirror objects thematise the painting discourse and refer to the viewer as a participant. Artists such as John M Armleder, Katharina Sieverding, Subodh Gupta, and Erwin Wurm also use mirror material in multifaceted ways.

The fascination with shiny and reflective objects characterizes the Schaufler Collection, from which the show SPLIT is curated. Many works combine beauty and coolness with a dash of glamor. Not only the reflective surfaces of the artworks have endeared the collectors, but also subtleties, changes in visual perception and illusion that are expressed in the ambiguous word reflection. Meant is not only the physical process in the work, but so also is the critical thinking associated with the paintings, the images, and their references to the world.

ARTISTS IN THE EXHIBITION:

Getulio Alviani · John M Armleder · Robert Barry · Daniele Buetti · Lee Bul · Jean-Marc Bustamante · Enrico Castellani · Tony Cragg · Carlos Cruz-Diez · Ian Davenport · Christian Eckart · Elger Esser · Sylvie Fleury · Gilbert & George · Antony Gormley · Subodh Gupta · Lori Hersberger · Gerhard Hoehme · Roni Horn · Anish Kapoor · Astrid Klein · Brigitte Kowanz · Bertrand Lavier · Adolf Luther · Heinz Mack · Christian Megert · Mathieu Mercier · Yasumasa Morimura · Maurizio Nannucci · Andy Ouchi · Giulio Paolini · Otto Piene · Jack Pierson · Michelangelo Pistoletto · Anne & Patrick Poirier · Thomas Ruff · Adrian Schiess · Katharina Sieverding · David Simpson · Vincent Szarek · Wolfgang Tillmans · Not Vital · Gary Webb · Erwin Wurm

Radiant Space

McClain Gallery

May 7 – June 25, 2016
Opening Reception May 7, 2 – 4 pm

McClain Gallery is pleased to present Radiant Space, featuring works by Peter Alexander, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Larry Bell, Gisela Colón, Stephen Dean, Christian Eckart, Gary Lang, De Wain Valentine and Marc Vaux. These artists share an interest in materiality, perception, light and color in pursuit of an experience that transcends the purely visual. Radiant Space includes paintings and sculptures by several pioneers of the Light and Space movement as well as artists who share their interest in the use of light and color as medium.

Larry Bell, Peter Alexander, and De Wain Valentine along with a number of other very notable West Coast artists such as James Turrell, Robert Irwin and John McCracken, played important roles in the creation and popularization of the Light and Space movement which sprang up in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. Roberta Smith from the New York Times, states: “These artists’ lack of interest in making visual objects led them to start creating situations that gave the viewer a new awareness of visual perception.” Instead of applying paint to canvas, or sculpting in bronze, they focused on light as their medium: a material found in abundance in Los Angeles.  Radiant Space features iconic Valentine “Discs,” Alexander “Bars,” and Bell “Cubes.” The innovations achieved by the Light and Space Movement were influential to artists who similarly focused on spatial phenomena.  

The concept of a space where art manifests resulting in a contemplative, spiritual experience is present in Christian Eckart’s pieces as well.  His Limbus Painting evokes traditional religious icon paintings.  The title of the series, “Limbus” refers to the period between the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ, a time the artist addresses as “a state of becoming.” Eckart sees the medium of painting “as an entryway or vehicle to the transcendent.” His recently completed Hobby Airport commission Cloud Room Field, fabricated from hundreds of panes of dichroic glass, utilizes both the environment’s natural luminance and the continuous motion of the airport’s security checkpoint to create a dynamic visual experience. Stephen Dean also employs the use of dichroic glass by combining fragments of the material with sheets of black aluminum foil and simple brown paper to highlight a shift of color and reflection that changes according to the viewer’s perspective. Gisela Colón’s “Glo-Pods” represent the work of the next generation of California Light and Space artists. The pods are produced using a technique called “blow-molding,” where she layers tinted acrylic sheets atop one another and then using hot air, molds them into the desired anamorphic shape. Her sculptures emanate diffused light and color. 

Similarly, the Op Art movement explores the optical effects of color theory and perception. The work of Richard Anuszkiewicz is synonymous with the movement. Anuszkiewicz’s use of strict geometry is offset by his use of intense color, resulting in vibrating abstraction. Gary Lang’s work has been described by writer Erik Quint as “pure sensation,” and his large circle paintings mimic “time machines for exploring space and light without beginning or end.” For artists such as Eckart, Dean, and Marc Vaux, it is the straddling of 2D and 3D art that makes the work most distinct. 

Artist Biographies: 

Peter Alexander (b. 1939, Los Angeles) lives and works in Santa Monica, CA.  Alexander’s work was the subject of a retrospective at the Orange County Museum of Art in 1999 and has been included in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles and internationally in Japan, New Zealand, England and Italy.  His work is in many collections including the Broad Foundation, Santa Monica; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.

Richard Anuszkiewicz (b. 1930) moved to New York in 1957 and by 1965 established himself as a leader in the Op Art movement.  That year, his work was included in the important group exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art.  His work is included in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum of Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul, Korea and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as many others. 

Larry Bell (b. 1939) lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Taos, NM. He has exhibited widely, including group exhibitions at the Tate Britain, London (1970); Hayward Gallery, London (1971) and Museum of Contemporary, Art San Diego (2011). Solo exhibitions include the Pasadena Art Museum (1972); Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (formerly Fort Worth Art Museum) (1975 and 1977); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1986); Denver Art Museum (1995); Carré d’Art Musée d’art Contemporain de Nîmes, France (2011) and The Chinati Foundation, Marfa, TX (2014).

Gisela Colón (b. 1966, Vancouver, Canada) was raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico and moved to Los Angeles after receiving her BA from the University of Puerto Rico.  Her work is the subject of a solo exhibition, which began at the Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown OH and will travel to International Museum of Art & Science, McAllen, TX; Castellani Art Museum, Niagara, NY; Museum of Arts and Sciences, Macon, GA; Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, NM and San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, San Angelo, TX. Colón’s work will also be included in two upcoming group exhibitions at the Chabot Museum, Rotterdam, The Netherlands and the Palmer Museum of Art, Penn State University, PA.

Stephen Dean (b.1968, France) lives and works in New York, and has exhibited extensively in the US and Europe including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014); National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2012); Musee du Quai Branly, Paris (2011); Tinguely Museum, Basel (2010) and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2007). Dean's work has also been exhibited in several Biennials: Moscow (2009), Site SantaFe (2006), Venice (2005), Istanbul (2003) and Whitney (2002). His work is in many collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Israel Museum, Tel Aviv; among others. 

Christian Eckart (b. 1959) is originally from Western Canada and moved to New York in 1984.  He received his MFA from Hunter College in 1986 and has been living and working in Houston since 2003. Eckart's work has been the subject of over 60 solo and 150 group exhibitions. His works are included in the permanent collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Eli Broad Foundation Collection, Santa Monica; Art Institute of Chicago; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and Shauwerk Sindelfingen, among other notable institutions.

Gary Lang (b. 1950, Los Angeles) lives and works in Ojai, CA. He received an MFA from Yale University in 1975, and a Fulbright/Hayes Travel and Research Grant to live in Barcelona for two years.  He settled in New York in the late 70s prior to moving back to California. Lang has had more than seventy solo exhibitions in the United States, Austria, France, Japan, The Netherlands, and Spain.  His work has been collected by the Brooklyn Museum of Art; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Menil Collection, Houston and Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT. 

De Wain Valentine (b. 1936) lives and works in Los Angeles.  Important early solo exhibitions were held at Ace Gallery, Los Angeles (1968); Galerie Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich (1969); Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1979); and PS1, New York (1981). More recently, Valentine was the subject of a solo exhibition at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2011). Valentine’s work can be found in numerous collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Muzeum Sztuki, Łódz, Poland; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

Marc Vaux (b. 1932, Wiltshire, England) attended the Swindon School of Art, before completing his art studies at the Slade School of Art in 1960. He also taught for many years, becoming Head of Painting at Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design, London, before retiring from teaching in 1989 to concentrate on his own work. Marc Vaux has exhibited widely in the UK and abroad and his work is represented in many public collections including Tate, London; Arts Council of Great Britain; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; City Art Gallery, Leeds; York Art Gallery; and Folkwang Museum, Essen, Germany. 

Above image: Peter Alexander, Green Square, 2012, Urethane, 40 x 40 x 2 inches. 

Wilding Cran, Post-Post

Christian Eckart
post-post
January 30  – March 26, 2016
Opening Reception: Saturday, January 30, 6-8pm

Wilding Cran Gallery is pleased to present post-post, a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed, Houston based artist Christian Eckart. Featuring new works, the exhibition explores Eckart’s philosophical inquiry and interrogation of the concept of “Art” articulated in the form of painting/sculpture hybrids. With a career spanning over 30 years, he has established a substantial record of more than 60 international solo exhibitions. post. post will be Eckart’s first solo show in Los Angeles. 

The presentation at Wilding Cran Gallery will include the most recent version of his well- known series, Sacra Conversazione Painting, subtitled Versione Follia, and two new  diptych works based upon his White Painting series from the mid-1980's. In addition there will be an example of a newly initiated series entitled Polychrome Paintings and a work related to Cloud Room Field, the recently completed 60 foot-long commission artwork for Houston Hobby Airport. 

Also on view will be The Absurd Vehicle, which was produced over a five year period from 2006-2011. Considered to be one of Eckart’s seminal and summary objects, he describes The Absurd Vehicle as a painting with an identity crisis, extending specifically out of the tradition of the Northern Romantic Sublime, that decided to become a sculpture, then a hot-rod, then a space vehicle, then a time machine and finally resolving itself, seemingly, as an oracle. The title, The Absurd Vehicle, references the motivations, aspirations and perhaps implausibility for paintings to be used as mechanisms of and for transcendence. "My work in general is an interrogation of such utility and expectations,” 
says Eckart. 

post-post is intended as a question, what is after after or what comes after after? The argument posited by Eckart's work is straightforward. By examining the underlying principles of the family and/or class of objects, actions, gestures, etc. deemed to be artworks, we can capture a glimpse of who and what we are through the objectification and/or crystallization of our hopes, wishes, needs, aspirations, dreams and desires within the phenomena we consensually acknowledge to be artworks. He deploys a kind of meta-painting as a way to engage the viewer into critical consideration of the underlying social, political, economic, philosophical, intellectual and spiritual imperatives, "the software” undergirding the concept of "Art" itself. Eckart explains that, “clearly all paintings are not“Art” and all “Art” is not painting, so what are the conditions that allow for a painting to enter into and take its place within the rarified realm of artworks.” 

ABOUT CHRISTIAN ECKART
Canadian born (Calgary, Alberta, 1959, American citizenship since 1995) international artist Christian Eckart, formerly based in New York (1984-2003), settled in Houston, Texas at the beginning of 2003. During the 20 years he lived in NYC and up to the present Eckart’s work has been the subject of over 60 solo exhibitions, including many museum surveys, and has been included in over 150 group exhibitions. His work is represented in many important private and public permanent collections including those of The Guggenheim Museum, N.Y., The Museum of Modern Art, N.Y., Museum ModernerKunst, Vienna, The Chicago Art Institute, The Detroit Institute of Art, the Broad Art Foundation and The Art Gallery of Ontario as well as many others throughout North America, Europe and Asia. With regard to Los Angeles, Eckart’s work has been collected in-depth by The Eli and Edythe Broad Collection and can be found in other important LA based collections. Eckart’s work was included in the Color & Form exhibition curated by Franklin Sirmans in 2010 at LACMA in relation to the work of Blinky Palermo which also included works by Peter Halley, Gunther Forg, John McCracken, among others. Eckart was an instructor at The School of Visual Art, NY, from 1994 through 2002, the Glassell School of Art of The Museum of Fine Art Houston 2003 - 2005 and he has held visiting professorships at both the University of Houston and Rice University. He has lectured extensively throughout North America and Europe, realized many public and private commissions, organized group exhibitions and published a number of essays and articles. 

ABOUT WILDING CRAN GALLERY
Wilding Cran Gallery, founded by Anthony Cran and Naomi Wilding, is a Los Angeles gallery representing international contemporary artists working in a variety of mediums. Since its April 2014 launch in the burgeoning arts district of downtown Los Angeles, the gallery has presented ten exhibitions in the main gallery and has hosted several special events from live music to art performances. The gallery also serves as a platform to support local and universal social causes through arts education programming and philanthropic work. Additionally, Wilding Cran programs Unit B, an independent creative project space in the storefront adjacent to the gallery. More info at www.wildingcran.com. 

Gallery hours: Wed - Fri, 11am– 6pm , Saturday, 12pm– 6pm, Closed Sunday-Tuesday. 

For media inquiries, please contact Jessica McCormack at jessica@wildingcran.com or 323 497 9308. 

www.wildingcran.com
939 South Santa Fe Ave Los Angeles, CA 90021
213 453 9000 

Haunting Holbein atTrépanier Baer

Haunting Holbein:
Evan Penny, Christian Eckart & Vikky Alexander
Opening Saturday, January 23, 2016
2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

TrépanierBaer is delighted to open its Winter 2016 Season with Haunting Holbein, an exhibition featuring new work by Evan Penny, and by Christian Eckart, including important early works by Vikky Alexander.

Evan Penny is a conceptually-based figurative sculptor and photographer living and working in Toronto, Ontario. Born in South Africa in 1953, Penny immigrated to Canada in 1964. He completed his BA with Honours in 1975 and his MFA in Sculpture in 1978, both at Alberta College of Art + Design.

Evan Penny has had numerous solo exhibitions around the world, including the Tomio Koyama Gallery, Tokyo; the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; the 49th Parallel, New York; and Galeria Sergovia, Spain, to name a few.  Penny’s work was the subject of a lauded solo exhibition titled Evan Penny: Re Figured. Curated by Daniel J. Schreiber of Germany’s Kunsthalle Tübingen, this large-scale survey exhibition included over 30 works, including larger-than-life sculptures and photographs. It was shown at European venues such as the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany (2011); the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, Austria (2012); and MARCA, Catanzaro, Italy (2012); and concluded its run at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada (2012/2013). A comprehensive multilingual catalogue accompanied the exhibition. Evan Penny's work will be included in 50 Years of Hyperrealist Sculpture at the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, Spain in the summer of 2016, and at MARCO, Monterrey, Mexico in the fall of 2016.

Evan Penny is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada; the Art Gallery of Ontario; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Columbus Museum of Art; the Glenbow Museum; Portrait Gallery of Canada; the Hirshhorn Museum; and the Art Gallery of Ontario, to name a few, and in many significant private collections around the world.

Christian Eckart is an abstract painter and sculptor. Born in Calgary, Canada in 1959, he lives and works in Houston, Texas. He graduated from the Alberta College of Art + Design in 1984, and completed his MFA from Hunter College, CUNY, New York in 1986. Since graduating, Eckart has participated in over 200 hundred solo and group exhibitions worldwide.

Christian Eckart has won and successfully completed numerous large-scale projects within the past decade. Two of note are a sculpture/mobile consisting of three large scale mirror polished stainless steel rings for an atrium at 805 – 3rd Avenue in Manhattan, New York for the Cohen Brothers Reality Group; and a wall-mounted triptych titled Hatrick made of 1,500 hand-made components installed in Calgary’s Centennial Place in 2013. Eckart recently unveiled a new wall-mounted commission for the William P. Hobby Airport in Houston, Texas. 
 
Christian Eckart’s work is represented in many important private and public permanent collections including those of the Guggenheim Museum, N.Y.; the Museum of Modern Art, N.Y.; the New York Public Library; the Chicago Art Institute; the Detroit Institute of Art; the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, Texas; the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna, Austria; the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Grenoble, France; the Australian National Gallery; the SCHAUWERK in Sindelfingen, Germany; and the Eli Broad and Eli Broad Family Foundations, Santa Monica, California as well as many others throughout North America, Europe and Asia. 

Vikky Alexander is a photographer/sculptor living and working in Vancouver. She teaches in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Born in Victoria, British Columbia, Alexander attended the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and graduated with her BFA in 1979.

Alexander has had solo exhibitions and installations at TrépanierBaer Gallery, Calgary; Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles; The Apartment, Vancouver; Art Gallery of Windsor; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; and at the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and Houses of Glass, The Engine Room Gallery, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand. She has been included in group exhibitions such as The Experience of Landscape, Whitney Museum of American Art; Toward a History of the Found Object, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon; in Interdidal: Vancouver Art and Artists at the Antwerp Museum of Contemporary Art where she exhibited four large format (40” x 60”) colour photographs from the Model Suite Series; and in the National Gallery of Canada’s Biennial of Contemporary Canadian Art titled Builders.

Alexander’s work is included in many prestigious collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the National Gallery of Canada; the Canada Council; the Deste Foundation, Athens, Greece; and the Vancouver Art Gallery, to name a few.

Image Credit:
Haunting Holbein Installation at Art Toronto 2015
Evan Penny, Homage to Holbein, 2015  (left)
Christian Eckart, Polychrome Painting #2, 2015 (right)