View and purchase works from this exhibit on mobergshop.com

TEXT BY MICHAELA MULLIN | VIEW IMAGES

2020 is definitely a year of many firsts, and in keeping with this, Moberg Gallery’s inaugural exhibit, SWAY, in its new space, at 2411 Grand Avenue, opens just as this strange year nears its closing. To help us celebrate, artist Jason Woodside has curated a spectacular show, with works from artists all over the globe. Normally, here is where we would address our viewers, the interested public, the collectors, wide and far, with two simple words:

Join us …

Joining, however, is more difficult in 2020—joining, as in gathering, as in, Look at this painting over here–could you grab me a glass of wine, please? Unless those words are spoken in your own home, to whomever you’ve deemed safe enough to lean in close to you and your screen. But the “us” hasn’t changed, despite the lack of proximate awareness we currently have of one another. We at the gallery are still here, and hopeful you will love what you see online, in person during normal business hours, or by appointment.

This gathering of art from street to studio, outdoor to indoor walls, includes familiar lines and color from Woodside, Adam Lucas, It’s A Living, Maser, Pref, Adele Renault, Ruben Sánchez, and Swoon; as well as new vision, with artists Evoca1, Elliott Routledge, and Gary Stranger. Swoon’s earth-ereal portraits, Woodside and Maser’s colorcopias, Sánchez’ abstract still lifes and sculpture, and Lucas’ city- and townscapes, all coalesce with the typographic wonderlands of Pref, It’s A Living, and Stranger, to form SWAY, an exhibit to warm this new gallery with its vibrancy and poignancy.

Jason Woodside’s new “Untitled” works, in spray paint on canvas take his dimensionalizing to a new depth. These paintings hold white space differently—they are more unidirectional, perhaps, heralding entry or exit, and prepositioning the eye of the viewer. Grant Wood-like hills are super streamlined futuristic 2D landscapes, candy-colored for joy. Woodside paints what one might imagine zero gravity looks like. He makes dreams we cannot remember.

Pref is an absolute master of turning letter and word into image, character into art, text on its head and side and back and front. He floats it and rolls it into the dimension we call third, on a dimension physics deems second. All these new works are done with spray paint on hand-cut paper. “Implode,” and various letters from his “Gutenberg Series” are typographic puzzles without answers, that the eye and mind don’t want to release from. Some, as with “U,” are very orderly, standing at attention, single file. But others, such as “T,” become a cluster of straight lines, short and long, and one’s eye begins a game of pick up sticks.

It’s A Living drips spray-painted messages on canvas from fully executed circles, in white paint, in the pieces, “Blue” and “Pink.” These are seeming targets, on backdrops of dark lavender and cotton candy pink— that though hit, never appeared to present lacunae. This is deep yet pastel space, running with white a few inches away from the very edge of the canvas’ “page,” like concrete poetry that hasn’t quite ‘set up.’

Swoon invites the viewer in with two loving portraits: one closed for warmth, “Sambhavna Girls,” (a block print and acrylic gouache on paper and painter’s panel), one opened for air, “Paulie,” (acrylic gouache, including metallic silver, and silkscreen on paper and wood). This is the year to ask: what is cozy and safe? What is open for breath and calm? The pandemic has shifted meanings, and these warm and cool comfort-zone images hold us like psychic embraces. The women are front and center, with “moving” backgrounds—shapes that conjure thought bubbles, in that they set a tone and a context for the women (and girl) to exist safely, assertively, and without social (male) affirmation.

Adele Renault’s large-scale oil on linens, “Amber Lockdown” and “Blue Paradise,” are sublime magnifications of bird feathers in blue and red. These large works ruffle the eye in intense ways—dark shadows that evoke soft sensation. The softness we imagine is both warm and cool like the best sheets on the best temperate mattress. In essence, we nest in that which nests.

Evoca1’s “Comforting Sounds” (oil on canvas), is a quiet portrait of a young boy, distracted, mesmerized, watching two birds alight. He holds bow and violin in separate hands, as if the birds flew out from between the two objects, as if the birds were music emerging from their contact. This child makes way for the awe of flight, the awe of difference, the awe of airborne movement, sonic and righteous movement. Evoca1’s palette is darker than the other works in this exhibit, offering a moment of slow but sudden grounding: syncope in its best form.

Maser’s “Halcyon Days 1” and “Halcyon Days 2,” spray paint on paper works, take Warholian flowers and shed them, skin them, bring them to line and take the looseness of this evocation and bring it home to Matisse-like reduction. But reduction is not derogatory, it is an exposition. The color blocking behind the black blooms and leaves holds abstract space for these growths, concerned with overlay, pressing, what is fore and what is in defense of, visually.

Elliott Routledge works with acrylic on canvas. His two paintings, “Pareidolia 1” and “Pareidolia 2,” look like jazz feels, or the blues, makes like water—part floating, part sinking. A deconstruction of swimming pools and sailing and French blue, all of which feel reminiscent of David Hockney’s California. These flying parcels of canvas, pulled like puzzle pieces, culled like color fields, are flagging a geography that can’t be easily identified. They are islands, they are bodies of water. Which is which is not a question but a beautiful statement.

Ruben Sánchez continues to awe with his palette; this time, he even goes black and white. He uses spray paint on canvas, and his orange and blue opposites do, indeed, attract. “Horse and Vase,” on the other hand, in black and white, is perfectly complementary, each part a gestaltian whole—the work itself is a cause and effect that has an affect that is clean and pure.

“Equilibrio,” his ceramic sculpture, is also that precise, cutting the air with no ambiguity. Its dark gray presence is not only notable, but impossible to ignore. The welcoming shapes and form are organic, making us feel kindred, familial, known, in a time where very little feels intimate any longer.

Gary Stranger’s screen prints “Order Chaos” and “Begin Again” are philosophical musings. Stranger manages black and white on canvas as graphic precision reminiscent of ’70s branding, for industries such as electronics. The line is lead—as maze or labyrinth—a word at the end of that curvaceous stick, semantic divining rod. There are the binary and repetitious considerations, which of course are both problematic and inherent and indicative of circular and cyclical movement and cessation.

Adam Lucas is an escape artist by way of ‘looking out.’ Working in acrylic and pastel on paper, “The Left Will Buy Property on the Right Because Sooner or Later Everybody wants to Live on the Water” and “Planted on the Balcony of a Hotel Motel with a Rundown Uptown Big City View,” offer views of what appear to be townscapes if not city-worthy. It is the bold color and delineated sky lines that give the viewer crisp visuals and even more discernable ideation—for what we see is often what we believe. “10002 Vertical,” however, is much more abstracted, almost “quilted” like a stained-glass window. It is full of image, copious cluster of shape. In this work, the idea that witnessing is clear comes into symbolic questioning. It feels playful, in a Stuart Davis kind of way, invoking the musical, as both an integrative and diegetic influence on how we view the world.

And looking out is what we’ve been doing so much of this year. Let SWAY offer a new view. This exhibit offers an emotional agility that has seemed impossible to achieve on our own this year. Even if each of us has a room of one’s own, and the room is a room with a view, let’s be honest: 2020 has been lonely. Engage with the life of these artists; their making is movement, progress—it’s vital. Let it vitalize us.

Exhibit Images

View and purchase works from this exhibit on mobergshop.com

ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

New York and Los Angeles-based artist Jason Woodside paints interior and exterior walls all over the world. His collaborative projects and commissions include high fashion and street brands, boutiques, galleries and museums, such as Colette in Paris, Adidas, Faberge, and Obey Clothing, as well as the New Museum in NYC, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Jeffrey Deitch. Born in Florida, Woodside attended the School of Visual Arts in NYC, and is also co-founder of the coffee shop/gallery/bookstore, Happy Bones. His paintings and murals have been exhibited in NYC, Paris, Los Angeles, Sydney, Berkeley, Miami, and Des Moines, among other urban locations. View on Instagram

Born in the Dominican Republic, Evoca1 spent his childhood drawing and playing baseball. At age 11, he moved to Hollywood, Florida. He is a self-taught figurative painter, muralist and sculptor, who continues to study the old masters and their techniques. His works are a personal reflection of his life experiences, as well as from observation of human behaviors and social struggles. He currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. View on Instagram

 

It’s A Living is not just a name or a statement but a life philosophy for Ricardo Gonzalez, a designer and artist from Durango, México. His signature script style can be easily recognized from large-scale murals to commercial work for some of the biggest brands, to a simple sticker in the street. The ambiguity in the typographical messages continually creates a dialogue between viewer and artwork. His clients include: Apple, Armani Exchange, Nike, Mercedes Benz, Google, Microsoft, Pepsi, Budweiser, Samsung, Airbnb, Bloomberg Business, Toyota, Vice, Lululemon, MTV, Yahoo!, Nissan, VH1, Coca Cola, Revlon, KRINK, Bing Bang Jewelry, Oprah Magazine, AIGA, Bowers & Wilkins, Harper Collins, New York Botanical Garden, Complex & Stussy. View on Instagram

Adam Lucas has added to the cultural zeitgeist of street art since 2011, producing playful, pun-centric work that utilizes humor as a lighthearted tactic of subversion. In 2016, he dropped his Hanksy moniker, and began showing as Lucas. His work layers images, text and bold design with playfully acerbic references culled from contemporary culture. His design is a nod to the synthetic Cubists; however, calibrated to express the distinctive urban street life and American popular culture. Both of the artist’s oeuvre reveal work that is bright, with rhythmic beats and opportunity for visual play, but is also couched in weightier, trenchant themes. View on Instagram

As early as 1995, under this moniker, Irish artist Maser began painting graffiti on the streets of Dublin, earning respect throughout Europe for his unique abstract style. After studying Visual Communication at art school in his home city, he went on to establish himself as one of Ireland’s leading visual artists working in the urban environment. His passion and drive have afforded him the opportunity to paint walls across many countries, including; Ireland, UK, Austria, Germany, Denmark, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United States. His large-scale mural work and his collaborations with artists such as musician Damien Dempsey; TED prize winner, JR; Connor Harrington; and Fintan Magee, have gained him notoriety not only in the graffiti world, but also have in the contemporary art world. View on Instagram

Pref is a British artist well known for his multi-layered typographic-style graffiti, and his incorporation and exploration of common words and key vernacular phrases. This multi-layering means that an element of deciphering is introduced, and the viewer is asked to disentangle images and meanings from the artwork. He initially trained at Chelsea Collage of Art, before going on to work in graphic design. The clear linear elements of his work, and his evolving interest in typography trespass across the borders of fine and graphic art in energetic and intriguing ways. He was recently commissioned by Italian fashion house Fendi to design new logos and branding, as well as lend his skills to the collection, Roma Amor. Pref currently lives and works in Los Angeles. View on Instagram  

Adele Renault paints realistic portraits of pigeons and people. Her subject matter may live in the gutter, or in an ivory tower. The size of her work ranges from small canvas to giant mural. Renault grew up in a musical family on a farm in the Belgian Ardennes. At age 14, she traveled abroad alone; lived in Venezuela on an exchange; then spent two years in Brighton, England. She studied and practiced visual arts, from classical oil painting to modern-day spray can graffiti. In 2010, she graduated from the Academie Royale des Beaux Arts in Brussels, with a degree in Graphic Design. Adele currently lives and works in Los Angeles. View on Instagram

 

Elliott Routledge is an Australian multimedia artist, investigating street art, painting, installation, sculpture and illustration. He’s installed public murals in Sydney, London, New York, Melbourne, Tokyo, Paris, Singapore, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. He’s collaborated with the skin care line Kiehl’s and held a residency in the Museums Quartier in Vienna. Routledge grew up in a creative family (two brothers are artist and art director) he initially side-stepped traditional art school and forged his own extremely distinctive style inspired by graffiti and skateboarding. Later, he studied multimedia and animation. In 2012, with renowned Sydney artist Beastman (Brad Eastman) and Routledge’s brother Marty, he opened The Hours – a gallery that attracted global talent. View on Instagram

 

Born and raised in Madrid, Ruben Sánchez is a self-taught artist with a strong, colorful graphic style that resonates through all of his projects. Coming from the cultural worlds of graffiti and skateboarding, Sánchez learned graphic design and illustration. In the mid 2000s, he mixed the techniques and influences from each field, adding new skills on wood, resins, etc., with continued self-education in the arts, where he started translating his own vision onto canvases, murals, reclaimed wood, sculptures or installations. His artwork can be found as part of art festivals, humanitarian projects or international exhibitions (including Denmark, France, Turkey, Spain, Bulgaria, Canada, the US, Greece, Hungary, and Jordan), but can also be found as ‘uncommissioned’ works in all kind of places. View on Instagram

Gary Stranger is a London-based artist who started out writing graffiti in 1996. Now a world-renowned artist, he’s known for his well-executed typographic pieces. Over the past decade, Gary has moved his wall paintings away from the traditional graffiti aesthetic. Both his studio work and his wall paintings consist of hand drawn and painted typographic arrangements.  his type is always stunningly executed, resulting in imagery that’s almost impossible to believe it’s created freehand. View on Instagram

 

Caledonia Curry, known professionally as Swoon, is a Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist whose work explores humanity through portraiture, printmaking, and immersive installation. Swoon graduated from Pratt in 2001 and in 2005 was the subject of a pivotal solo exhibition mounted by now-mentor Jeffrey Deitch. Swoon’s work has since adorned the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, the Tate Modern, LA MOCA, Mass MoCA, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and many more. Her 2014 Brooklyn Museum exhibition, Submerged Motherlands, was the Museum’s first solo show devoted to a living artist with roots in street art. In Fall 2017, Swoon created a large scale, site-specific installation in the Zaha Hadid-designed Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center as part of a two-story solo exhibition. She spends much of her time enveloped in art and social practice by way of community building initiatives in, among others: Haiti, New Orleans, and the Rust Belt town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. Swoon is a dedicated advocate for the proper treatment of mental health and trauma. View on Instagram