June 3 – 26, 2011
Artist Reception: Friday, June 3rd; 8-11 PM
Glenn Barr “Faces”
“FACES” explores the images that permeate our collective consciousness and define the iconic. Like the painting of a poised face looking out at us, hidden from the light in a dark pub, or the tattered advertisement hanging forgotten in the back of a garage, they’ve always been there… and not there. We tend not to see things that have lived with us day in and day out. Once these iconic images of the “ideal” are gone, we miss them, as though trying to remember an old friend whose name escapes us.
Glenn Barr felt the paintings for this show needed something other than canvas to rest on, so he used found lumber, scavenged from the Detroit landscape, much as he used to do when he started out in the art world. He’s always liked painting on found objects that have history and personality, like tired, sun-bleached panels from some collapsed building, or discarded cabinet doors lying alongside the road. By discovering them and painting on them, he’s infusing these wood remnants with new life, which gives his work a natural aesthetic of familiarity and creates a permanent visual of the iconic ideal.
This exhibition will also celebrate the special, advance release of Glenn Barr’s new art volume, FACES.
Lyle Motley “Sending the Sightlings”
Lyle Motley has a huge pile of questions. Questions like, “If you were sitting in car stuck in traffic , or alone on the front steps of your house , or stuck in a room with a bunch of empty chairs, and there was some sort of a cloud, what would you do? Would you kick at it or punch it? Shoot your sling shot at it? Yell or be silent? Would you laugh at it or tell it stupid jokes? Try to name it or leave it unnamed? Would you try to escape it or let it follow you around? Would you float above it or sit below? Would you accept the picture in front of you or see another? If you saw another picture what would it be? Could you hold it, like hands cupping water? If you held it and kept holding it, what would happen then? What would that look like? Would it expand or contract? Radiate out or collapse into itself? Could it have mass and momentum? Turn weakness into strength, sadness into joy, confusion into clarity? Would you try to contain it or send it out? And if you sent it out where would it go? East or West, North or South, or just a block down the street? Would anyone else notice it or would it silently pass them by? Could they see it or would they look right through? But what if it is real, like a rock or your shadow at sunset, and you had no words to describe it, what would you do? Would you expose a picture? Sculpt a stone? Strum a song? Or would you paint?”
Sending the Sightlings is a collection of paintings that reflect Lyle Motley’s decision to explore these questions with paint, wire, and steel, heralding Lyle Motley’s return to La Luz De Jesus Gallery. Lyle’s new paintings continue to explore the narrative potential of abstraction, and also present his most ambitious inclusion of sculptural elements to date. Lyle creates these unique sculptural paintings by bending and brazing rods of steel, filling the spaces with custom cut panels and finally finishing in oils. As a result several of the paintings in “Sending The Sightlings” escape and are unbound by the squares & rectangles of frames.
Contact Gallery Director Matthew Gardocki for purchase info:
info@laluzdejesus.com (323)666-7667