City of Quartz 2 – Berlin

City of Quartz 2

At HVW8 Berlin
Linienstraße 161
10115
April 27 – June 1st, 2024
On the occasion of Berlin Gallery Weekend

Featuring:

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr
Eddie Salinas
Emmanuel Louisnord Desir
Fulton Leroy Washington
Rikkí Wright
Willbert Olivar & Lalo Avila

City of Quartz 2 is a follow up to the eponymously eponymous exhibition from March of 2020, which opened just days before the world would close down…
Ironically the initial exhibition lifted its name from the 1990 book by author Mike Davis, which examines how contemporary Los Angeles had been shaped by different powerful forces in history much like the Covid 19 pandemic would come to shape and effect the entire world.. As the dust continues to settle in a post pandemic paradigm, we once again assemble a group of seven Los Angeles based artists at an attempt to understand where we might be headed in the City of Quartz.

Los Angeles, regarded as the media capital, has long been responsible for authoring and disseminating trends in culture that reverberate the world over. Perched on the edge of the western world, we begin at the end and work our way toward the future, literally, in time and place our findings from the once sleepy desert village onto the European stage (the beginning of the western world) and examine them in a way one could only do in a city like Berlin Germany.

The two HVW8 galleries bookend the entirety of The West, with a bunch of stuff happening in between, City of Quartz 2 is an attempt to understand what the heck is going on in a world which feels to be spiraling at an ever accelerated pace.

City of Quartz 2 will open during Berlin Gallery Weekend with an opening reception on Friday April 27th and continue on view through the end of May.

Gallery Weekend marks the beginning of the spring and summer season in the region where the gallery will expect to receive hundreds of visitors over the course of the exhibition. City of Quartz 2 is the continuation of periodical surveys examining the shifting zeitgeist of Los Angeles through its most prominent artists of the moment. Within the exhibition several of the artists have been included in major museum exhibitions, and biennials such as Made in LA, and the Rubell Museum.

Alfonso Gonzales Jr.

Alfonso Gonzalez Jr. (b. 1989, Los Angeles; lives and works in Los Angeles) is an artist whose work developed from close observation of his father’s skillful trade in commercial sign painting. He draws inspiration in the permanence of hand-painted signage and the physical weathering remnants of Los Angeles to narrate his own familial histories of labor and image-making. Gonzalez’s paintings, while seemingly passive still-lifes, excavate the sedimented interactions that happen on everyday public surfaces. His multi-layered works function as contemporary palimpsests, surfaces in which the original facade has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. Gonzalez’s works are not merely metaphors, but objects that uphold the visual as a form of knowledge and language.

Eddie Salinas

Eddie Salinas (b. 1994, Whittier, California) is a visual artist and photographer from Victorville, California. Salinas earned a BFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. His work considers the afterlife of the High Desert, often focusing on the derelict buildings, desolate landscapes, degenerative activity, and bureaucratic neglect that characterize his hometown.

Salinas has exhibited at Webber Gallery, Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; HVW8, Los Angeles; Fahey/Klein Gallery, Los Angeles, Public Access, New York; and has an upcoming exhibition at with HVW8, Berlin. He released his debut book, Don’t Bury Him Yet, through Long Leash Magazines and will be publishing a forthcoming book of photographs with Friend Editions.

Emmanuel Louisnord Desir

Emmanuel Louisnord Desir’s practice includes painting, assemblage, and sculpture that addresses colonialism, spirituality, and biblical accounts, particularly Abrahamic narratives and their relevance within the histories of many diasporas around the world. Desir takes inspiration from stories and teachings from the Bible, but at the same time his works question canonical Christianity through gestures that undermine colonial power. His oil paintings on wood panel collage a visual world of symbols that reference both contemporary life and historical moments. These works feature allegories that allude to larger historical and political issues while also serving as spiritual recollections of memory and testimony.

Fulton Leroy Washington aka “Mr Wash”

Fulton Leroy Washington is a self-taught artist with the unique ability to express human emotions in the form of paintings, an educator, and a public speaker. Wrongfully convicted in 1997 for a non-violent drug offense, learned and refined his craft in oil and acrylic while serving a life sentence, the mandatory minimum that had been set during the era of the War on Drugs.

On May 5, 2016, after Fulton Leroy Washington had been incarcerated for 21 years, President Obama commuted his sentence and granted him clemency. In 2020, Fulton Leroy Washington was selected as one of 30 artists to participate in the Hammer Museum’s Made in L.A. biennial, where he was also the recipient of the Public Recognition Award. His exhibited works have been acquired by U.S. museums and national and international collectors. Most recently his work has been featured in the group shows Shattered Glass at Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in Los Angeles and Miami Art Basel 2021, and Black American Portraits at LACMA. Fulton Leroy Washington’s exhibited painting of Kobe Bryant was acquired by the museum with funds courtesy of Aubrey Drake Graham aka Drake.

Rikkí Wright

Time, memory, and the body intersect in Rikkí Wright’s evocative work. Her imagery and her materials emerge from her own body and her personal history. Memories of the rich farmland of Alabama, where she was born and regularly returns inform the content of her art. Wright’s exhibitions present two bodies of work, dreamlike cyanotypes, the largest of which are created with prints of her own body, and ceramic sculptures infused with family memories. Both bodies of work are made with materials and processes that derive from nature. The cyanotypes are produced outdoors with sunlight and the ceramics incorporate clay from the soil of her family’s Alabama farm. The artist’s presence is felt in all of her works. Wright describes the imprint of her body and of plants and objects in her cyanotypes as what is left after presence. Memories are recorded and preserved. She compares the process to fossilization, where nature preserves the traces of what was once there. She considers the cyanotype to be the most suitable printmaking technique to create a cohesive collaboration with nature.

Willbert Olivar & Lalo Avila

The LA based duo, also known as Terror Supply are noted for their striking synthesis of airbrush painting, tattoo illustration, and graphic design, Terror Supply offers a fresh and thought-provoking perspective on the contemporary Los Angeles scene. Terror Supply, composed of two prolific artists who spent their youth in Mexico City and Los Angeles, grapple with the complex and often overlooked narratives of Chicano lifestyle. Their work is a vibrant testament to their shared heritage, capturing the often paradoxical aspects of everyday life. In a unique twist, the duo’s work also incorporates elements of abstract horror motifs. The result is a captivating blend of raw, visceral imagery that challenges the viewer’s perceptions of reality.