Vikky Alexander "Les Jardins de Versailles" @ Wilding Cran Gallery

Bring on the warm jets. In legendary pioneer of the Appropriation and Pictures Generation movements, artist Vikky Alexander mines the artifice and simulacra of paradise in a new body of work that takes us down the primrose path of the Gardens of Versailles. Since the 1980s, Alexander has explored desire and fantasy in media landscapes. In this series of collages and wall works, the landscapes are more literal, collaged and beautifully mounted on aluminum with a clash of crisp and pixelated color palettes. The blue of bygone travel agencies. The brown of a divorce lawyer’s filing cabinet. There are pieces of familiarity—old magazine cut outs, advertisements, but also photographs from the artist’s archive. Utopia deconstructed. Beauty as a slash and burn exercise in dismantling the illusions of our industrial society’s control over nature. Alexander will always be a master at this unique craft. In this case, the beautiful Gardens of Versailles denote something more sinister. The garden as a manifestation of a Jungian god complex. Vikky Alexander "Les Jardins de Versailles" will be on view until December 22 at Wilding Cran Gallery.

Stephen Neidich Presents New Kinetic Sculptures @ Wilding Cran In Los Angeles

Two years ago, at the end of the summer, Stephen Neidich set about creating a new kinetic sculpture, Wake Me Up When It’s Over for the L.A. On Fire group show at Wilding Cran Gallery. The piece was constructed from a fully fabricated Venetian blind, rendered in steel with exposed motor sprockets, roller chain, and backlit by a fiery red light. When Neidich began thinking about five more minutes please, his second solo show with Wilding Cran—his 2019 debut with the gallery, oikkm56, which featured a single kinetic installation fit with over a dozen steel chains affixed to 14 camshafts that monotonously smashed the chains against rubble sourced from construction sites around the artist’s Frogtown studio—he wanted to reexamine the movement of kinetic blinds, this time using the chain as a more painterly line within the works.

“Without the light you only see the movement, but with the light you get this eerie flicker, the shape and projections of fire masked by these sharp, simple movements that are a result of the shapes and shadows of the blind. The kinetics of the sculpture become the fire. But it’s not fire, it’s this hollow idea of a fire…. Ultimately these are machines, and the integrity comes not from their obsolescence, but from the grace of their intended performance,” says Neidich. “I started to think about the movement of this often dysfunctional object and how best to enhance it to the point of being performative.”

The gallery is lit only from the glow of each work and visitors to the space activate the dozen works in the exhibition (each varying in blind orientation and size, from 24 x 24 inches to 9 x 16 feet) by tripping a motion sensor upon entry that sets off a subtle symphony, placing each visitor inside a surround sound panopticon, a voyeuristic platform with a vantage upon a series of abstract horizons.

five more minutes please is on view by appointment through April 3 @ Wilding Cran Gallery 1700 S. Santa Fe Avenue, unit 460. photographs by Lani Trock

Michelle Blade's Into The Forest @ Wilding Cran In Los Angeles

Set against the backdrop of a global pandemic and fraught political times, Into the Forest is an amalgamation of experience and emotion made while sheltering in place. Taking note from her most intimate and immediate surroundings, Blade’s paintings depict a collection of quotidian scenes:  the last blush of day, her children in the garden, the remnants of a meal, flowers in stages of decay, mountainous landscapes and towering trees under radiant moons. These meditative moments of solitude within a California landscape take note from the natural world and closely examine its stillness, strength, persistence and metaphysical qualities.

Driven by the inescapable qualities of the natural world this exhibition is about curiosity and one's search for meaning and place within the cosmos. The perceived energy Blade depicts lays behind physical appearances. It’s a world of benevolent energy flowing through and protecting life. The title of the exhibition “Into the Forest”, is not simply an escapist fantasy but also a rallying call to dive more deeply into ones reality and reassess our connection to the health of our afflicted world. In the words of Mary Oliver, using “Attention as devotion”.

Into The Forest is on view for two more days @ Wilding Cran 1700 S. Santa Fe Ave #460 Los Angeles CA 90021

Stephen Neidich "Making the rounds (a place to wait)" @ Wilding Cran Gallery In Los Angeles

Making the rounds (a place to wait) is a new installation by Stephen Neidich is on view now at Wilding Cran gallery in Los Angeles. Comprised of long metal chains attached to mechanized camshafts that generate a circular rotation across blocks of urbanite, the resulting sculpture produces a mechanical melody that echoes throughout the gallery. This creates a contradiction of theory and practice – industrial forms rarely induce feelings of serenity, yet there is something hypnotic and oddly calming about the rhythm of metal hitting concrete. Neidich has repurposed but not totally decommissioned these moving parts. He does not attempt to fully disguise their recognizable forms but instead alludes to the performative nature of machines, focusing on their aesthetic qualities. On view through July 27 at Wilding Cran Gallery 939 South Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles. photographs by Lani Trock

Closing Party For 'Water & Power' And After Party For Karon Davis' 'Muddy Water' @ Underground Museum in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles cultural world came out in droves to the Underground Museum September 15 to celebrate the closing of Water & Power and the opening of Muddy Water. Water & Power featured four artworks from the MOCA permanent collection, curated by the late Noah Davis at the Underground Museum. Muddy Water is a solo exhibition by Karon Davis currently on view at Wilding Cran Gallery through November 4. photographs by Lani Trock

Karon Davis' Solo Exhibition 'Muddy Water' @ Wilding Cran Gallery In Los Angeles

Just as North Carolina faced yet another “500-year storm,” Los Angeles saw the opening of Karon Davis’s Muddy Water at Wilding Cran Gallery. The show takes it’s name from Bessie Smith’s 1927 recording of Muddy Water, a song about the Great Mississippi Flood. The body of work reflects on the effects of climate change, and subsequent migration and displacement, offering a glimpse into the experiences people encounter during natural disasters. Muddy Water is on view through November 4th at Wilding Cran Gallery 939 South Santa Fe Avenue Los Angeles.

Last Chance to Catch Christian Eckhart "Post-Post" @ Wilding Cran Gallery In Los Angeles

Wilding Cran Gallery is presents Post-Post, a solo exhibition by internationally acclaimed, Houston based artist Christian Eckart. Featuring new works, the exhibition explores Eckart’s philosophical inquiry and interrogation of the concept of “Art” articulated in the form of painting/sculpture hybrids. A highlight of the exhibition is The Absurd Vehicle, which was produced over a five year period from 2006-2011. Considered to be one of Eckart’s seminal and summary objects, he regards The Absurd Vehicle as a painting with an identity crisis, extending from the tradition of the Northern Romantic Sublime. He sees the work as a painting that decided to become a sculpture, then a hot-rod, then a space vehicle, then a time machine and finally resolving itself, seemingly, as an oracle. The title, The Absurd Vehicle, references the motivations, aspirations and perhaps implausibility for paintings to be used as mechanisms of and for transcendence. Christian Eckhart "Post-Post" will be on view until April 2, 2016 at Wilding Cran Gallery, 939 South Santa Fe Avenue Los Angeles CA

The Highway Is For Gamblers: Read Our Interview With Artist Jeremy Everett Who Crashed A 60-Foot Long Truck Full Of Milk On A Utah Highway For Art →

In Jeremy Everett’s latest, most ambitious work of art, entitled FLOY – a magnum opus of grandiosity and scale – the artist crashes a 60-foot truck on a highway in Utah, leaving milk spilled across the asphalt. The wreckage was filmed from a helicopter ­– the artist had to race from the crash site to the helipad before the milk evaporated. Indeed, evaporation is an important part of Everett’s oeuvre – in his Double Pour series, for which his current exhibition at Wilding Cran is named after, the artist captured water spilled on a generic parking lot in Los Angeles before it dried and disappeared into the ether. While most artists apply material to material, Everett’s practice seems almost like a VHS tape on constant rewind; a fuzzy layering of time, space and ephemerality that makes you realize the illusion of time, the impermanence of life and the absurdity of everything. Read our interview with the artist here.