Foundations at Caryle Packer
Foundations at Carlye Packer. Curated by Jason Roussos.
Review by Timothy LeBlanc
It is almost a cliché in the art world that summer is a dead time where every gallery phones it in with a group show. Often this results in a lack luster show that few love, but occasionally the mega galleries will do something spectacular, like Jeffery Deitch's Clay Pop earlier this summer. It is rarer for a smaller gallery to knock it out of the park, yet Carlye Packer's show Foundations curated by Jason Roussos is a homerun.
They have done this by bringing together a wonderful group of eight artists from across a variety of spectrums. This is most obvious in the variety of mediums that a viewer encounters. Sterling Ruby's fabric, Grant Levy-Lucero's clay, Marley White's pine wood and brass, Acacia Marable's oil and sisal dartboards, and others. This may sound too disparate to work well, but this tension is key to why the exhibition works. Each piece adding to this feeling through its own internal tension.
Vampire 125, 2013 by Sterling Ruby is one of the works that greets you in the gallery. Its gigantic fangs dripping blood, a perfect horror movie trope. It is rendered though, in camo and florescent orange fabric so filled it is ready to burst. Any imagined horror is rendered comically inert.
Grant Levy-Lucero, Sculpture About Painting 2, Cover the Earth, 2023
Grant Levy-Lucero highlights a different inherent tension with Sculpture About Painting 2, Cover the Earth, 2023. The two-foot-high ceramic jug is one in an excellent group of works that combine the idea of Greco-Roman ceramics with modern consumer products and specifically the commercial signs he has seen around Los Angeles. This work in particular, is layered as it rips Sherwin Williams "Cover the Earth" logo, not sending the most environmental message, and is enacted by the work with its earthen clay body covered by glaze.
Acacia Marable, Color Pains #2, 2023
The true highlights of the show are Acacia Marable's three works done on dart boards. The works, Color Pains #2, #3, 2023 and Mixed Feelings #2, 2022 are at first quite unassuming. Hung as a triptych, they look ready for a tournament but reward any viewer willing to step up to them. The sisal, a self-healing fiber product, that makes up the board has been pushed past its healing point. Each board is punctured and beat up and yet they are still outstandingly beautiful objects.
All the works making up the show are amazing on their own but come together to create a sum larger than its pieces. The curator, Roussos, stated that the goal is to show the, "...diversity of production coming out of Los Angeles", and while this impossible to do with just eight artists this show called Foundations as it is a great place to start.
A-Passion-Project highly recommends going to see the show. Foundations at Carlye Packer Gallery is on view until September 16th.