HOLLYWOOD BABYLON – Los Angeles

A two person collaborative exhibition by Kosuke Kawamura and Cali DeWitt

Opening: Friday July 1, 2022, 1-6 pm

“Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse” – James Dean

“My whole life has been decided by fate. I’ve never planned anything that’s happened to me.” – Sharon Tate

HVW8 Gallery Los Angeles is pleased to present HOLLYWOOD BABYLON, a two-person collaborative exhibition featuring works from Kosuke Kawamura and Cali Dewitt, with a public opening Friday July 1, from 1-6 pm.

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON is the counterpart to The Evil That Pursues Me Is The Same Evil That Pursues You, Kosuke and Cali’s first collaboration at S01 in Tokyo earlier this spring. In this follow-up collaborative exhibition, the two artists borrow methods of early hip-hop and punk methodology to assemble direct, poster-like images. Kawamura utilizes his signature “shredding” technique to remix and collage DeWitt’s iconic image/text dialectic compositions to create new dark pop interpolations of original monochromatic works that feature images of iconic and tragic celebrities.

Repurposing the title of Kenneth Anger’s book of scandals from Hollywood’s golden age, HOLLYWOOD BABYLON takes this theme one step further, updating the dark narratives of Hollywood with contemporary characters such as Michael Jackson and OJ Simpson, amongst the familiar fallen mainstays of Hollywood’s past. With titles of famous B-movies creating new seemingly dark but apt slogans, we derive new messages from the iconic images.

HOLLYWOOD BABYLON will be the first time Kosuke Kawamura has exhibited in Los Angeles.

Kosuke Kawamura

The Hiroshima-born creative started off as a graphic designer and began exhibiting his artworks by the early 2000s across Japan and the globe which led to collaborations with the likes of adidas, G- shock, Uniqlo, Gundam, Evangelion, AKIRA and more as his recognizable collage- based style started attracting a larger audience. He first started off with digital collages utilizing Photoshop and Illustrator but moved towards the traditional method of shredding magazines which he would casually find anywhere and specifically avoids the inclusion of famous photos, acclaimed sources or media that provides little to no artistic value. His initial works are heavily inspired by the anarchic American artist Winston Smith.

Cali DeWitt

Cali DeWitt (b. 1973) is an artist, photographer, director and designer who lives in Los Angeles. DeWitt has published artists books with multiple publishers including New Rose in Town (2013) from Hess Press, and Grave Yard came out in late 2014 from And Press. He has exhibited artworks at Big Love, Tokyo; Muddguts in New York; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen; and For Your Art, Human Resources, and Family Gallery in Los Angeles.

Gallery & media contact:
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HVW8 Gallery Los Angeles
661 N. Spaulding Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90036
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Sunday, 1- 6 pm and by appointment.