American visual artist Tim Biskup is a rebellious outlier in the shark-eat-shark ecosystem of the art market. His project space, Face Guts, is a testament to his anti-establishment ethos. Ceremoniously opening on 4/20, his exhibition Spring Collection will include a new suite of paintings and drawings with Biskup’s unique brand of psychedelia—a vision quest of intuitive gestures and symmetrical forms that play with pareidolia through abstraction. It’s an ayahuasca trip chased by a Freudian drip of haunted symbolism that harkens to Cuban artist Wifredo Lam and maybe the brain scans of enlightened butterflies. Along with new art comes the release of a limited edition yearbook. “Face Guts Year Seven” is a 56-page document of exhibitions, installations, and “whatever else catches the artist’s eye.” Read more.
WhiteBox.LA Presents Tim Biskup: EMERGENT @ Face Guts Gallery In Los Angeles
For the past 15 years, Tim Biskup has been perfecting a style of monochrome graphite drawings on paper that has come to define his artistic practice. The abstract images he creates with a single block of graphite draw on modernist forms simultaneously reminiscent of the Isamu Noguchi and Henry Moore, but are executed with the whimsy and humor of contemporary flat field artists like and Joe Bradley and Jonas Wood. Biskup has garnered tens of millions of views of his live drawing videos posted to his @tbiskup account on Instagram. Many of the works created live on this platform will be exhibited as part of EMERGENT. Culled from thousands of finished drawings and studies Biskup’s Face Guts exhibition examines the process and breadth of this body of his work and includes works created throughout the 2020 pandemic and some as recently as the day of the opening event. Face Guts Gallery will also host a series of live drawing events that will allow the public to witness the spontaneous birth of Biskup’s graceful lines and will be integrated into the show as they are created. EMERGENT will be on view at Face Guts Gallery from December 9 to January 7 2024 with an opening reception on December 9th 5-8pm. 4136 Verdugo Road Los Angeles 90065
Read Our Interview of Artist Darius Airo Ahead of Both His Exhibitions in Los Angeles →
Installation view of Casual Banter @ Face Guts. Courtesy of Darius Airo and Joshua White.
Heavily intertwined with the work of the Chicago Imagists, artist Darius Airo has derived a decent amount of his contemporary style from the group of representational artists. Imbued with the quintessential imagery and pop iconography of the Imagists, Airo’s work fuses these art historical trends with his own inclination for surrealist imagery and the grotesquerie. His romanticization of public space is influenced by these same artistic roots, but is guided by the poetry he writes. Airo interweaves the quotidian with the romantic through his poetic approach to painting and drawing, unintentionally highlighting the exceptional in the mundane.
Airo has two shows happening concurrently in Los Angeles. His show Dense at Central Server Works is a collaboration between him and Jim Mooijekind. The respective artists’ work operates in tandem; the paintings are in conversation with one another, all generally characterized by the abstracted figure and its gaze. Casual Banter at Face Guts is a sort of retrospective of Airo’s drawings from the last ten years, curated by photographer Joshua White. The drawings are filled with kinetic figural forms seemingly capable of conversing amongst themselves. Read more.