Casper Brindle Video by EMS
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PRESS: The Argonaut Reviews LIGHT | GLYPHS
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Photograph courtesy Brent Broza Photography
Casper Brindle is convinced that he’s putting out some of his best work yet in his latest exhibition at William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica.
The artist, who began painting in the 1980s and is a disciple of the Light and Space art movement in Los Angeles, has woven a Southern California influence through all his work, whether the hot rod and surf culture found in his earlier work or the pure light in his latest exhibition.
“I think the light in LA is different than anywhere else in the world,” Brindle said. “This will be my best show yet. I’m really proud of this show.”
The show is called “Light | Glyphs” and will be on display through November 5. The series contains 25 pieces of which 15 will be shown at William Turner Gallery.
“Light is a huge part of my work in general and especially this body of work,” Brindle said. “I would say it is as important as the materials that I use, even more so. These works came to fruition just playing with light and seeing what happens with other materials. I started with light itself and manipulated the materials to do different things and bring different energies.”
Brindle, who was born in Toronto, moved to LA when he was 6 years old in the mid-1970s and he has lived there ever since. He was an apprentice to the Light and Space pioneer Eric Orr. He has exhibited on a regular basis at William Turner Gallery for more than 10 years and this is his 7th solo exhibition with the gallery.
A surfer, Brindle is constantly observing the play of light on water and how it expresses itself with color. Many of the works were done during the COVID lockdowns, something that Brindle said worked out to be a great thing for a lot of artists.
“Everything went on the backburner,” Brindle said. “You didn’t have to follow deadlines. You were kind of like, now it is time to really play with ideas and research and do the things that you can’t do when you have commitments and things like that.”
To create the works in this exhibit, Brindle used automotive paints, pigmented acrylic and metal leaf. The final works are 3 feet by 3 feet by 4 inches. He used translucent sculptural boxes which he air painted with diffused colors through the frosted surfaces.
The light in the colored background reflects in a quietly dramatic manner. In the center of each piece is a glyph, inspired by hieroglyphs that were ancient modes of communication, where symbols or marks were carved in relief to convey ideas.
Brindle’s glyph is a three-dimensional rectangle that intersects the center of the translucent box. The glyphs have been described as a beacon cutting through fog – quietly dramatic.
“I’m fascinated with hieroglyphs and how they used them to communicate,” Brindle said. “I use that as kind of a vehicle to do this newer work with glyphs. They go back awhile in the paintings.
There is just something that a spirit bigger than us is speaking to us. When I look at just a single glyph, it is speaking to that bigger power. I found that fascinating to use in the work.”
With Brindle’s use of gold and silver leaf to create the glyphs, he feels they really lend themselves to telling a story and he wanted to further the investigation into glyphs with these paintings.
Casper Brindle, Light-Glyph II, 2021, pigmented acrylic, 74” x 44” x 12”
Two different processes went into creating the works in this exhibit. With the glyphs, he did a lot of preparation, research and models. The decision-making process was very conscious as from the start he had an idea of where he wanted to go with them.
The paintings, on the other hand, had a more Zen approach. Brindle would find himself in a meditative state, a state of calmness where he let the work take over.
“It is a meditative state where all of a sudden at the end of the day, you’re like, ‘What just happened?’” Brindle said. “It’s that kind of thing when you’re driving and then all of a sudden, you’re at your destination and you don’t remember how you got there. That’s the same feeling I get when I make the works. The day starts and then it is 8 p.m. and I’ve got to go home.”
Brindle said he doesn’t typically have a preconceived idea of what he is going to do with the paintings. He lets them paint themselves.
“It’s a constant trance-like state of making right and wrong decisions along the way,” Brindle said. “I don’t say I’m going to do a blue painting. I just start and make a number of decisions along the way and just kind of paint these paintings.”
Throughout the years and with individual paintings, his choice of materials has always changed and shifted, evolving until he gets to where he is now.
“That’s part of the process,” Brindle said. “The best part about making art is the process. Things are changing all the time until you get to a place where you are like, now I have it. I know what this is about.”
The trance-like state is one that he shares with those that experience his work. Brindle said he’s had a lot of reactions to his art, but the most common one is a sense of lightness and calm — a sense of their bodies decompressing and entering a meditative state.
He stressed the importance of seeing his three-dimensional work in person. It’s the only way to experience its depth and the way the light shimmers and moves. The large paintings shift as a person walks by them, inviting viewers to pause, to explore perception.
This is Brindle’s first major show since the pandemic delayed an earlier showing at the William Turner Gallery in 2020. He invites patrons to come and lose themselves in his meditative works, to let art minister to their hungry souls.”
SPECTRUM NEWS 1 FEATURE - Andy Moses: Recent Works
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SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Four years ago, artist Andy Moses was celebrated in a 30-year survey of his life’s work not far from where he grew up.
Mid-career, his work showed a consistent palette inspired by his time spent in the water while surfing off the beaches of Southern California.
What You Need To Know
"Recent Works" by Andy Moses is currently on view at the William Turner Gallery in Bergamot Station until February 10
While attending CalArts, Moses focused on performance, film, and painting and studied with Michael Asher, John Baldessari, and Barbara Kruger
Moses' father Ed was an American painter and was part of a group of artists called the “Cool School” that included artists Ed Ruscha, Edward Kienholz, and Ken Price
In 2017, 30 years of Andy Moses’ work was celebrated in a survey in the Pete and Susan Barrett Art Gallery at Santa Monica College
“You never saw the same thing twice,” said Moses. “The line was always moving. The colors were always shifting.”
Looking at his most recent artwork today, you still see the same influence.
“Then when you rode a wave, you saw the texture on the wave, you saw the changing light, the shifting shades of color, and those were gigantic influences on me as a painter,” he said.
Interested in the physical properties of paint, Moses developed a method of painting through chemical reactions and by playing with viscosity and gravity to create compositions that simulate nature. Even the shape of his canvas looks like a wave.
“I’m interested in how they suggest landscape or this kind of Earthscape, capturing a view of somewhere of the Earth,” said Moses. “It could be oceanic, it could be desert, but you’re looking through this flat space into the infinite and you’re capturing all the subtle change of light that actually happens when you’re looking at this kind of phenomenon.”
Growing up as the son of Ed Moses, one of the most celebrated artists in Los Angeles' history, Moses had a lot to live up to once he decided to become an artist himself. While studying film at CalArts, Moses discovered he preferred having sole control of a canvas over a camera. He now paints out of his father’s old studio, where his spirit can be found everywhere.
“It was great growing up with a father for a painter,” said Moses. “There was always something to look at. He was always pushing the boundaries. He was always evolving. He was always moving forward.”
Now, it’s his turn to move forward to his newest show called "Recent Works" at the William Turner Gallery in Santa Monica's Bergamot Station.
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“One of the things that I love when people have come to the gallery, especially during this time of COVID, there’s this appetite to be in the presence of an actual work of art, not just see something digitally or online or virtually, and these pieces are really interactive,” said gallery director William Turner.
Opening during a pandemic does limit visitors, but Moses' work gets their full attention.
“For 35 years now, I’ve been interested in exploring this line between abstraction and the galactic and microscopic phenomenon on a human scale, and how we relate to it,” he said.
Art is human, and human is nature.
OPENING NEXT SATURDAY - BLACK MADONNA - MARK STEVEN GREENFIELD
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Collateral, 2020, Gold Leaf and Acrylic on Wood Panel, 30" X 56”
"For the faithful, the Black Madonnas represent the basis of theological mystery from which all possibility emanates. For the clergy, they provide cover for some unexplained religious dogma. For me, they held all the intrigue of confronting a blank canvas.” — Mark Steven Greenfield
BLACK MADONNA
MARK STEVEN GREENFIELD
OPENING NEXT SATURDAY
We will be open from 11-7 next Saturday for an all day opening reception in full compliance with CDC-recommendations and social distancing protocol.
We look forward to welcoming you to view the exhibition virtually and by appointment from September 19 - November 28, abiding by all of the CDC-recommended precautions.
BOOK AN APPOINTMENT
William Turner Gallery is pleased to present, Black Madonna, an exhibition of new and recent work by Mark Steven Greenfield. The exhibition explores aspects of the African American experience in American culture, often critiquing and offering unique perspectives on a society still grappling with the consequences of slavery and racial injustice. As Greenfield has stated, “My work incorporates irony, humor, tragedy, pathos, history, and a myriad of other tools, to challenge long-held notions of race in a different way."
The exhibition highlights a striking new series of 17 Black Madonna paintings, which re-imagine these unique religious icons, that began appearing in the 13th and 14th centuries in churches throughout Medieval Europe. The origin and purpose of the Black Madonnas in religious iconography are somewhat of a mystery and the subject of much scholarly debate, which inspired Greenfield to infuse them with his own contemporary meaning and perspective.
Mississippi Cookout, 2018, Gold Leaf & Acrylic on Wood Panel, 24”x18”
Greenfield's versions are rendered in the Byzantine style of their art historical predecessors, with the black Virgin Mother and Baby Jesus as the central focus within circular compositions, or tondos. These tondos float amongst abstract discs, set within fields of lustrous, gold leaf. The Madonnas predominate before a variety of backgrounds, which were traditionally innocuous. Greenfield, however, presents these backdrops as various revenge fantasies, where white supremacists are cast in the role of victims, suffering the fates they often inflicted.
The effect is striking, the meaning unexpected. For Greenfield, a dedicated meditator, the discs symbolize the mantras one repeats during meditation, and often appear in his work. The Black Madonnas, seated innocently before the violence playing out behind, are the thoughts which come unbidden during meditation between mantras - to be acknowledged, then released. The Madonnas play their traditional role, conveying notions of maternal love, seemingly oblivious to these various scenes of retribution, where the rope is decidedly on the other neck. Yet these role reversals are less about revenge fantasies and more about creating contexts for shifts in perspective - for empathy. Tinged with humor, titles like, Mississippi Cookout, and Burnin’ Down the House, invite us to imagine an alternate reality, so that we might better understand the brutal realities of the past as we navigate our way forward. As Greenfield states, “Fear of the “other” often devolves into mindless hatred. Yet, sometimes the path to empathy lies in the visualization of one’s physical victimization—particularly when paired with a symbol that has come to be associated with universal love.” He adds, “The revenge fantasy exists in the darker regions of the subconscious in response to centuries of injustice. It is subdued by the higher aspiration that leads toward a more saintly life. As during the Renaissance, when Black Madonnas first gained prominence, they serve as metaphors for a spectrum of new beginnings.”
Throughout his career, Greenfield's work has dealt with elucidating the African American experience - examining stereotypes and other acts of oppression, often by illuminating the most oppressive of acts - those of omission. Pieces like Escrava Anastacia , and Zong , are among a number of new works in the exhibition that present us with powerful images of figures and events neglected by history. Greenfield's images of a muzzled Anastacia, a legendary South American slave, known for her exceptional beauty and miraculous powers of healing, and the ill-fated souls cast to oblivion from the slave ship Zong, compel us to learn their stories.
This exhibition was a year and a half in the planning, yet feels uncannily destined for this moment. It opens at a time of unprecedented upheaval, where a global pandemic and outrage over continuing racial inequality, have challenged our institutions, and our perceptions of them, to the core. With Black Madonna , Mark Steven Greenfield brings an important and timely perspective to the discussion.
We look forward to welcoming you to view the exhibition virtually and by appointment, abiding by all of the CDC-recommended precautions.