‘Untitled’ (2024) by Armando Chant has been selected as a finalist in the Art Gallery of New South Wales Wynne Prize 2024.

We were elated to host the launch of I THOUGHT THAT I WOULD BE IN HEAVEN BUT I AM ONLY UP A TREE by Ryan James Caruthers at our LA gallery.⁣

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Featuring an essay by Ocean Vuong and published by Forma Editions, April 2024.
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In I THOUGHT THAT I WOULD BE IN HEAVEN BUT I AM ONLY UP A TREE, Ryan James Caruthers recounts his time spent in the forest as a child, escaping the societal challenges related to his identity. Despite feeling the unnaturalness imposed upon his young queer body, he found comfort in nature.⁣⁣⁣
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Nature itself is queer — a realm of alterity that speaks in a mysterious language of light, wind, and rain.⁣⁣⁣
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Caruthers endeavours to rediscover himself within the California landscape, aiming to conjure moments from his adolescence and reconnect with his origins. Inspired by Caspar David Friedrich’s painting “The Monk by the Sea,” his search for self among the trees evokes an intimate connection akin to that of lovers, reflecting his desire to surrender to an unpredictable force.⁣⁣⁣

Artist Statement: Bath stone has a quiet charge that brings us back to it, time and time again. It has an emotional absorbency, and we relish the hours spent in the local stone yards and quarries around the city. These explorations inadvertently reveal an extremely precious aspect to the stones: Years of weathering has created patina where the stone – left exposed – has darkened, while underneath, it has been protected and remains in its raw state.

Old Bablyonian omen texts reveal that ancient Mesopotamians observed the behavior of birds, weather patterns and other details of everyday life to predict the future. The tradition of divination in Korea involved practices including silk reading, rain-making rituals and offerings to birds, ancestors and deities. We are a species preoccupied with foretelling the future, and I think it arises from our need for safety and survival. I think about my grandparents and how they were displaced from their homes through war and how it must have put them in a constant state of fear, and how some of that anxiety must have passed down to me.

‘Koo Bohnchang’s Voyages’ - a major retrospective of the artist, featuring over 500 works and around 600 materials - is on view at Seoul Museum of Art through March, 2024. Showing a body of work that spans five decades, Koo’s subject matters range from still objects and people, to places and artefacts. He says, “I’ve always been interested in one’s traces, be it of people or of objects. In hindsight, I am the accumulation of who I was and what I experienced of the past.”

We are pleased to announce the representation of artist Armando Chant. Combining embroidered linen with pigment washes and etching, Sydney-based Chant uses techniques of erasure and negation to arrive at ambiguous, atmospheric landscapes. His work focuses on the inherent potential of the in-between, a place of imaginative engagement and a nascent state of emergence. “I’m interested in the Japanese aesthetic theory of Ma – where a space that appears empty is actually full of content and meaning,” he says. “It ties in with my interest in the Dansaekhwa movement: there is a softness to this minimalist approach, where the void is celebrated as a place where things come into being, rather than a place of nothingness.”

An annual astronomical event, Winter Solstice marks the shortest day and longest night of the year. It symbolizes death and rebirth, and thus, new beginnings. As the gradual waning of daylight hours is reversed and begins to grow again, we set intentions and goals, bringing them to fruition in the months to come. Also known as Hibernal Solstice, this is an ideal moment for rest and reflection. The work of Paul Philp and Woo Byoung Yun contemplates on these themes; their practice has time — and particularly empty time — baked into it. Working in ceramic and plaster respectively, the artists’ materials impose periods of rest and inaction upon the creator.

In celebration of our winter show, The Sun Stands Still: A Group Exhibition by Paul Philp & Woo Byoung Yun, we partnered with Minkyu Lee of Cosmic Garden to host a Winter Solstice workshop at our LA gallery.

Nadia Yaron's Gratitude Flower for JB (2023) is part of ‘100 Hooks’, a group exhibition at Blunk Space featuring over 100 esteemed artists and designers from the US, UK, Europe, Mexico, and Japan. The show is a continuation of JB Blunk’s seminal 1981 solo exhibition ‘100 Plates Plus’ held at David Cole Gallery in Inverness, California. In a nod to his training in Japan, Blunk’s plates denied the distinction between art and craft. Blunk enacted a particular synthesis of art and the objects of life, creating these functional objects thoughtfully and artfully throughout his career.

This exhibition consists of 100 different responses to the same brief: to create one hook of any size or material. Hooks, like plates, are utilitarian objects. Each participating artist and designer was invited as a result of an existing connection with Blunk’s work. From exhibiting at Blunk Space, a residency at his iconic home and studio, or through the inspiration of his oeuvre, each participant has been touched by Blunk’s legacy. Each of the artists and designers offers their own approach to materials, form, and process, but also the relationship of aesthetics to function.

We are pleased to announce the representation of artist Samuel Collins.

We are pleased to announce the representation of artist Sarah Kaye Rodden.