Main Gallery: JOSHUA CALLAGHAN Very Concerned, Somewhat Concerned, Not at all Concerned
Project Room: PAUL BUTLER Everybody
May 10 – June 14, 2008 Opening Reception: Saturday, May 10, 6 – 8PM
CONTACT: BANK Lorraine Molina, Director, 213.621.4055 125 W. 4th St. Los Angeles, CA 90013 Gallery Hours: TUES. – SAT. 11am-5pm lorraine@bank-art.com, http://www.bank-art.com
JOSHUA CALLAGHAN Very Concerned, Somewhat Concerned, Not at all Concerned
Joshua Callaghan’s interdisciplinary work is often a mix of wit, dark humor and critique of American material culture. For his debut at Bank, Callaghan culls together found material to create abstract sculptures of graphs and charts mapping a variety of data. These linear geometric forms can easily be dismissed as homage to minimalist object making until the titles reveal their true identity. The sculptures are pictorial devices measuring human behavior, cultural garbage, political strife and so on. This exhibition is as much a collection of ideas about how our culture defines itself through statistics as a collection of formal propositions.
The impulse behind this body of work can be clearly traced to the context from which it emerged; looming pessimism, economic insecurity, and a sense of helplessness in the face of the inertia of a civilization moving toward certain collapse. In compensation comes the absurd and arrogant feeling of privilege of being a witness to that collapse, an impulse that must be common to many individuals throughout cultures and history who sense they are living in the downward slope of a statistical arc.
Joshua Callaghan has exhibited internationally at venues including the UC Riverside Sweeney Gallery, The Guggenheim Gallery of Chapman University, and LA Louver in Los Angeles. His videos have been shown at museums and film festivals around the world and he has completed a series of public projects in Southern California. Callaghan is the recipient of a Fulbright Grant, holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Asheville and a MFA in New Genres from UCLA. He is based in Los Angeles.
PAUL BUTLER Everybody
Paul Butler’s collage work centers around idealized images depicted in typical glossy magazine spreads. Using the language of subtraction or effacement, Butler masks out text or figures using layers of tape and torn paper to create a hybrid between abstraction, portraiture and editorial design. For “Everybody,” Butler introduces a new series of text-based works that focus on the isolation of single words found in books and magazines pages. Floating on sheets of negative space, these solitary words create a quiet disjointed narrative, perhaps the artists attempt at meditation.
Paul Butler is a Winnipeg based artist known for his traveling ‘Collage Party!’ exhibitions. The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art has recently published a catalog archiving these exhibitions. Butler has also exhibited at White Columns in NY, Zieher Smith NY, MOCA Geffen LA in association with Outpost for Contemporary Art as well as MOCA Grand Ave. and the Power Plant, Toronto. Butler is also the director of Winnipeg's Other Gallery, which represents the work of a newly emerging generation of Canadian artists; guest curator of Plug IN ICA’s Overlooked Space; and the founder of theUpperTradingPost.com, a non-profit, invitational forum for artists' trading.
