Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code. The geometric pattern that composes each acrylic-on-panel painting is determined by a preordained ratio of 2 to 3. But even though a formulaic system determines the image’s structure, its surface is full of painterly effects. While the minimalist appearance of these works references similarly striped paintings by Frank Stella, Hoeber does not emphasize the painting’s underlying structure but instead tugs it apart and obscures it. Layers of paint betray the image not as surface-and-support, but as presence with depth.
Using a variety of media, the Los Angeles–based artist Julian Hoeber produces fastidiously ordered compositions. His paintings, constructions, and installations emphasize concept and materiality even-handedly, resulting in works evocative of both intangible theory and concrete spatial relationships. His immersive environment Demon Hill (2010-2011) used gravity as its primary tool, while undermining everything certain about it; inside the space, the most predictable force on Earth operated at an unexpected and deeply disorienting angle. Uncommon sensation is a thread that runs through much of Hoeber’s work. The otherworldly springs from the readily available, unusually arranged. His paintings are situated somewhere between Modernism’s emphasis on the physical reality of the painting, Postmodernism’s fraying of that reality, and Op art’s insistence on playing perceptual tricks.
Shot in the streets of Tokyo, Collapse , is a meditation on the passing of time and on the complicated way in which we are smashed between the past and the future...
MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...
Chris Johanson’s Untitled (Painting of a Man Leaving in Boat) (2010) pictures a canoe drifting toward an off-kilter horizon line, which demarcates the cobalt sea from the cerulean sky...
In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
Composed of four images, the series Sleeping Elephant in the Axis of Yogyakarta (2011) explores the artist’s observation of how Javanese mythology and cosmology have marked the geography of Yogyakarta, the cultural centre of Indonesia...
Will Rogan’s video Eraser (2014) shows a hearse parked in a clearing amidst leaf barren trees...
Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points...
Reeder’s works often start with language—and his Pasta Paintings are no different...
The application of bright colors and kitsch materials in Flower Tree manifests a playful comment on the influence of popular culture and urban lifestyle...
Ammo Bunker (2009) is a multipart installation that includes large-scale wall prints and an architectural model...
Though not strictly representational, some objects in Untitled (1962) are recognizable: a flower, an egg, a foot...
Oliver Laric’s video Versions is part of an ongoing body of work that has continued to evolve and mutate over time...
Towhead n’Ganga, enclosed in darkness, lorded over by the sexualized folded high priestless form reflects many of Kelley’s works, in both its compositional and semantic qualities...
With Roca Carbón (Charcoal Rock, 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
Domes #1 represents a significant moment in Chicago’s career when her art began to change from a New York-influenced Abstract Expressionist style to one that reflected the pop-inflected art being made in Los Angeles...