Visible is a group exhibition featuring Los Angeles artists who have drawing-based studio practices.
Mark Dean Veca and Eric Yahnker draw upon found imagery to present playful figurative motifs that give new meaning to pop culture iconography. In Veca’s paintings and drawings, the familiar faces of Cookie Monster and the Kool-Aid mascot invite viewers to explore a wild network of precise line work. By using marks that seem to ooze and agitate, Veca’s intricate pictures spring to life with a pulsating energy. Yahnker employs skillful rendering and careful compositions to present well executed visual absurdities. In a large-scale graphite and color pencil portrait of The Wizard of Oz protagonist, Dorothy, Yahnker adorns his subject with a colorful Doritos Corn Chip bag. Instead of colorization coming from a psychedelic fantasy, Dorothy’s black and white world is chromatically altered by a snack food with a name similar to her own.
By presenting subject matter in specific formats — head shot portraiture or television screens — the work of both Patrick Lee and Joe Biel focuses sharply revealing intimate depths. With a tremendous facility for lifelike portraiture, Lee draws his subjects with extreme detail and emotional sensitivity. Lee’s drawings feature men who embody street tough personas; however, his delicate touch records soft and subtle characteristics that illuminate unexpected beauty and vulnerability. Biel renders late twentieth century model television sets that are stacked-up like boxes on a sparse miniature stage. On their screens, viewers can see famous movie stills, historic broadcast images and current event sensations. An atmospheric collapsing of time and space comes over Biel’s pictures, and one is confronted with a place where any memory can be recalled or where any reality can be created.
Joe Biel received an MFA in Painting from the University of Michigan. Biel’s work has been exhibited in galleries nationally and internationally at LA Louver Gallery, Venice, CA; Roberts and Tilton Gallery, Culver City, CA; Goff + Rosenthal Gallery, New York, NY; Greg Kucera Gallery, Seattle, WA; and Galerie Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin, Germany.
Patrick Lee attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and is the recipient of the 2006 Peter S. Reed Foundation Achievement Award. Lee has had solo exhibitions at Western Project, Los Angeles, CA and Ameringer McEnery Yohe, New York, NY.
Mark Dean Veca received his BFA from Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, CA. In 2011 he was commissioned by the NYC Department of Education to create a site-specific mural for the Spruce Street School designed by Frank O. Gehry. Veca has had solo exhibitions at the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; The Lab Gallery, New York, NY; and Western Project, Los Angeles, CA.
Eric Yahnker received his BFA in animation from the California Institute of the Arts. Yahnker’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions at galleries and venues including: The Armory Show, New York, NY; Ambach & Rice, Los Angeles, CA; Anna Kustera, New York, NY; Voorkamer, Lier, Belgium;?Western Exhibitions, Chicago, IL;? and Four Boxes Gallery, Skive, Denmark.
