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...
With Roca Carbon ( Charcoal Rock , 2012) and Roca Grafito ( Graphite Rock , 2012), López plays with our relationship to inert and unremarkable objects such as rocks...
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...
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...
In the six-minute single-channel video Higher Horse , Kate Gilmore perches herself on top of a tall pile of plaster blocks, in front of a pink colored wall with vein-like streaks of red...
The artist describes the work as “very performative video-pieces but they take on a more sculptural feel...
Gabriel Kuri has created a series of works in which he juxtaposes perennial and ephemeral materials...
To explore the boundaries between artwork and audience, Gimhongsok created a series of sculptural performances in which a person wearing an animal costume poses in the gallery...
Custom-built for a silent film star in 1934 in Santa Monica, the Sten-Frenke House is an idiosyncratic icon...
Apartment on Cardboard (2000) is an exterior view of an abstracted apartment building...
Human Quarry is a large work on paper by Leslie Shows made of a combination of acrylic paint and collage...
Ammo Bunker (2009) is a multipart installation that includes large-scale wall prints and an architectural model...
Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...