MALONEY FINE ART

FORD BECKMAN: Pop Targets

February 25 - April 14, 2012

Opening reception: Saturday, February 25, 6-8 PM

Maloney Fine Art is pleased to present Pop Targets,
an exhibition of new paintings by artist Ford Beckman.

For the past two decades Ford Beckman has made art via multiple approaches and in a variety of styles, nearly simultaneously creating minimalistic "Black Wall Paintings" and explosive "Pop Paintings."

When Ford Beckman is paying homage to one of his artist-heros, whether it be Malevich, Pollock, Johns or Warhol, he distills that artist's style to its essentials and then reinvigorates whatever image he's chosen with an adroit use of color and of industrial materials.

"Pop Targets" is an ongoing investigation of the hybridization of minimal and pop aesthetics. Mechanical or gestural, explosive or contemplative, abstract or geometric, Beckman's Neo-Suprematist/Neo-Spiritual/Neo-Pop paintings expand and continue a modernist discourse.

Whether it is the reinterpretation of the square, the ultimate modernist pursuit, or the reinvention of the target, the need to re-think and rework the iconic is a constant pursuit for this painter.

"Beckman's painting is a response to the spiritual crisis of modernity. With Beckman, painting renews its spiritual intention, becomes a spiritual sanctuary, achieves, once again, a spiritual aura, if in a very different, indeed worsening spiritual climate." Donald Kuspit

Beckman's work has been exhibited internationally and is included in such notable public collections as Panza Collection, Italy; Saatchi Collection, London; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Israeli Museum, Jerusalem; Essl Collection, Vienna; the Denver Art Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

MALONEY FINE ART

2680 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034 310.570.6420

www.maloneyfineart.com

Inquiries – please call / email:

MICHAEL MALONEY 310.570.6420 michael@maloneyfineart.com

FORD BECKMAN, "Pop Target", 2011, paper construction, hand painted, high gloss industrial finish 32 X 40 inches

FORD BECKMAN, "Modern Thoughts", 2011, paper construction, high gloss industrial finish, black and white abstraction 32 X 40 inches

DANNY FIRST: Peaceful Solitude

January 7 – February 18, 2012

Opening reception for the artist: Saturday, January 7, 6-8 PM

Maloney Fine Art is pleased to present Peaceful Solitude, an exhibition of new sculpture by Los Angeles-based artist Danny First.

This marks Danny First's first solo exhibition in Los Angeles.

Danny First has been exploring sculpture for the past five years; first working in clay and more recently in bronze, to create whimsical busts. He has also developed a body of work utilizing reclaimed / recycled materials to create functional benches which incorporate text reflecting First’s droll sense of humor. Whether it is figurative or utilitarian in nature, First’s work is light and unpretentious. Informed by art history and the tradition of creating sculptural forms, First’s sculpture reflects the artist’s optimistic view of life.

Often, an artist's list of influences and references becomes predictable--if he is clearly influenced by one forebear, he will likely subscribe to that person's school, and an astute viewer can tease out subsequent connections. Not so Danny First. First starts from a classic stance--sculptures of Everyman, presenting viewers with tabulae rasa upon which to project one's own qualities. The effect is sublimely subtle, and gives viewers an additional hook upon which to hang their personal hats--we are all of us naifs at base, and First seems to revel in both the sadness and the humor of this. He acts as a guide for the viewer, but one who stays relatively mute throughout a tour, allowing his audience to puzzle over the very things as to which we think explanation should either be easy or forthcoming. After spending time with First's heads, one realizes that neither is the case--the truth is us, and the split-second reaction that First captures in his portrayals is the most innocent, the least edited of all. His Everyman is not purely blank, then--but as to why First leaves unsaid. His are portraits of the universal and the undefined--but still manage to carry a heavy pedigree, creating a polar experience of both gravity and levity.

Danny First lives and works in Los Angeles.

MALONEY FINE ART

2680 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034 310.570.6420

www.maloneyfineart.com

Inquiries – please call / email:

MICHAEL MALONEY 310.570.6420 michael@maloneyfineart.com

The Minimalists: Donald, Tony, and Carl, 2011, Bronze, Edition of 5

32 1/2 x 16 x 12 inches each, 72 1/2 x 16 x 12 (including base)

Manfred, 2011, Painted ceramic on painted plywood base, Unique

24 x 16 x 12 inches, 68 x 15 x 12 (including base)

Abram, 2011, Painted ceramic on painted plywood base, Unique

24 x 16 x 12 inches, 68 x 15 x 15 (including base)

Leroy, 2011, Bronze, Edition of 5

23 x 16 x 12 inches, 32 x 16 x 12 (including base)

On Hold For A Bigger Collector Than You, 2011, Laser-cut, recycled plastics, Edition of 15

32 x 26 x 24 inches

Please Wait To Be Seated, 2011, Laser-cut, recycled plastics, Edition of 15

32 x 26 x 24 inches

GEORGE STOLL: prime numbers + catenary curves

November 5 – December 17, 2011

Opening reception for the artist: Saturday, November 5, 6-8 PM

Maloney Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by George Stoll.

According to the artist, “From the invention of zero 2,500 years ago in India to the use of the Golden Section in classical architecture, the world of mathematics fascinates me even if I’m no more than a tourist. Yet despite my rudimentary understanding of math and geometry, the abstract possibilities intrigue me because its patterns are so often surprising and elegant. Catenary curves have occurred in my work by default or design for years. They show up in the Mother’s Day Pearls and aluminum foil Christmas garland sculptures. They are also the source material for many of my Tupperware pieces. “

The sculptures in the show are hung 1 1/8 inches away from the wall on steel pins and are created with materials usually used for making jewelry. These include beading wire, silver rings and glass beads. The artist selected beads from Czechoslovakia, Ghana, China and Japan because of their inherent paint-like quality. They are arranged in groups by color of equal lengths within each piece. These lines add up to prime numbers. A prime number is a number that can only be divided by 1 and itself (i.e., 2, 3, 5, 7, 13, etc.) For example, one of them consists of 11 overlapping curves, and each of the 11 sections is of equal lengths of 11 colors. Stoll employed the lengths of color to reveal the patterns and utilized gravity as a partner and guide.

A recipient of the Rome Prize, George Stoll's work has been exhibited extensively and he has had numerous solo exhibitions, including Baldwin Gallery, Aspen; Maloney Fine Art, Los Angeles; Grant Selwyn Fine Art, New York; Gallery Seomi, Seoul; Windows Gallery, Brussels; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Boston; and The Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati.

Stoll’s works have appeared in group exhibitions internationally, including Cheim & Read, New York; American Academy in Rome, Biagiotti Progetto Arte, Florence; Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Salzburg/Paris; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Drawing Center, New York.

Public collections include La Colección Jumex, Mexico City; Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles; San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art; Museum of Contemporary Art Seattle; the Norton Family Collection as well as other institutions.

MALONEY FINE ART
2680 South La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90034 310.570.6420
www.maloneyfineart.com

Inquiries – please call / email:
MICHAEL MALONEY 310.570.6420 michael@maloneyfineart.com

Untitled (11 lengths of colored beads on 5 pins,12 inches apart), 2011

31 1/2 x 48 x 1 1/8 inches

Untitled (29 lengths of colored beads on 6 pins, 28 1/2, 5 1/2, 33 3/4, 5 1/2, and 28 1/2 inches apart), 2011

42 1/2 x 101 3/4 x 1 1/8 inches

Untitled (17 lengths of colored beads on 3 pins, 21 inches apart), 2011

18 1/2 x 42 x 1 1/8 inches

Untitled (11 lengths of colored beads on 13 pins, 11 inches apart), 2011

21 1/2 x 132 x 1 1/8 inches

GRETA WALLER: Ice Paintings

October 2011

Flank by Flank, 2011, Oil on canvas, 44 x 47 inches

Maloney Fine Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Greta Waller. In easel-sized canvases, the artist continues her investigation of the still life as an exposition of painting’s temporal character; a struggle to harness the ceaseless motion or changing state of objects in the world. With a tightly-focused haste to the painterly surfaces, Waller’s figurative works are almost puritanical in their doubts and convictions about the experience of seeing as it is evoked in painting.

In a recent group of works, Waller’s stark palette defines hovering, closeup perspectives on large, irregular blocks of ice melting in unassuming, periwinkle-trimmed dishes; lit by artificial light. The ice, in the process of changing states (melting into water), evokes the artist’s iconographic practice:

“My goal in painting has evolved into the feat to solidify the changing object.

My ultimate goal in painting is to be able to give a different definition of what that solid object might stereotypically be in my viewer and to myself. I have yet to define what reality is, but I chose painting as a means to understand it. Reality is always moving in terms of light, our perception of it, and time. Painting is my constant struggle to harness that which is fleeting. When I say that I know my reality through painting I want it to be understood that it is a choice I have made in order to confront what is fleeting. When I look at a painting I completed many years ago it hs the incredible ability to transport me back to that moment. I am able to smell the air, perhaps feel the sun, or remember my frustrations at the time. My painting are irreplaceable and brutally honest documents of my life, my time, and my desires. Although the paintings are reflections of the object before me, they are more than that. My paintings are a meditation on myself.”

The paintings carry out this Apollonian task; penetrating the stasis of the image on canvas by presenting objects that—in being seen—are experienced as having potential energy; that are for instance melting or burning; that are raw; that may spoil. The recurrence of subjects alluding to staples or necessities—blocks of ice or cuts of meat, with their ephemeral textural behaviors—are paid a perverse attention in the sparsely populated paintings, as if they were luxuries in a context of scarcity.

Greta Waller has exhibited in group shows in Los Angeles and New York and is completing her MFA at the University of California, Los Angeles. This is Waller’s first one-person show in Los Angeles.

Cracked, But Not Broken, 2011, Oil on canvas, 40 x 48 inches

Augustus, 2011, Oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

Struggle for Pleasure, 2011, Oil on canvas, 72 x 84 inches

25LB Ice, 2010, Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 inches

Vuillard’s Ice, 2010, Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches