LOS ANGELES, CA.- Walter Maciel Gallery is presenting Easy now. by Los Angeles artist Andy Kolar. The exhibition consists of abstract painting, sculpture and two installations marking Kolar’s second solo show with the gallery.
A departure from Kolar’s previous work, this exhibition draws a tighter intertwined narrative between his abstract paintings and their translations into objects. The relationship shared by all of the components in the show begins to fall in or onto itself becoming more self-referential while at the same time opening into a more external dialogue. Central to the exhibition is a sculptural installation, Move it, Move it depicting a full scale, wooden gantry used to move heavy objects and typically made of aluminum or steel. The gantry is built to be functional however the use of plywood in its construction renders it mostly useless for any real application. The distinct placement of an elongated abstract sculpture hangs from the upper beam by pulley and ropes suggesting its use for moving objects from one area to another. Upon closer inspection, the colorful orb reveals its construction made of light-weight cotton and stitched canvas. It hangs precariously as if in mid move to set up the narrative for the relationship of the other works in the exhibition.
In the paintings that accompany the sculptures, oblong forms are banded together to form a larger group. These clusters are captured in a moment with the implication of previously being suspended and moved around in space. While they allude to actual objects of one sort or another they never quite reveal the original source. The compositions explore the relationship between abstraction and figuration by questioning referential, implicative and relevant potentials within the totality of the painting. The paintings serve as a pictorial documentation for the potential action and movement of the sculptures themselves being moved by the gantry. In addition, there are three sculptural works that act as hypothetical end points for where the elements being moved by the gantry will ultimately reside. Each work has its own slightly different end result in how the object becomes placed within its new environment. The largest is an installation that combines painting, sculpture, and the construction of a small structure used to house some of the sewn, fabric sculptural elements.
In conjunction with the show, Kolar will present a new mural on the façade of our gallery continuing his playful shapes and color pairings. The exterior surface of the gallery becomes his canvas with groupings of oblong colored forms positioned along the bottom edge like totems juxtaposed with a stack of bean-like blobs breaking away at the top with free falling shapes around the main doorway. In keeping with Kolar’s visual patterning, a distinct thin red line grounds the stack as it projects diagonally upward to the top edge of the building. The mural marks our second façade painting following Cynthia Ona Innis’s inaugural artwork created a few months after taking over our building in 2015.
Kolar received his MFA in Drawing and Painting at California State University, Long Beach in 2007. He has been included in numerous exhibitions in Southern California including the recent shows 6018 Wilshire at Edward Cella Gallery, Wall Painting 2013 and FORMS OF ABSTRACTION at the Irvine Fine Arts Center and De Stil at Andrew Shire Gallery. In 2010 Kolar was one of 45 artists included in the California Biennial curated by Sarah Bancroft at the Orange County Museum of Art. He was previously represented and included in solo and group shows at Carl Berg Gallery. Kolar’s works are included in several private and corporate collections including the recent acquisition at Pimco Corporation in Orange County.
