An exhibition exchange with a Los Angeles based gallery Durden and Ray.
David Leapman was born in London and now lives in Riverside California. He graduated from Goldsmiths College London in 1981. His major exhibitions include; The Problems of Picturing, Serpentine Gallery and Aperto, Venice Biennale. Leapman is a YBA artist (Young British Artist). The Saatchi Collection paintings are included in Shark Infested Waters, The Saatchi Collection of British Art in the 90s. Leapman is the winner of John Moores Painting Prize in 1995. He represented Great Britain in the XXVIe Festival International de la Peinture, Haut de Cagnes, France. Leapman's work can be found in major private, corporate and public collections around the world; including The Arts Council of GB, Contemporary Arts Society, Government Art Collection, British Council, Walker Art Gallery, Victoria & Albert Museum , Sony, Unilever, Virgin and Goldman Sachs.
Valerie Wilcox, b. in San Diego, CA., currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Along with receiving a BFA in graphic design, she has studied printmaking, painting, photography and sculpture. Wilcox has exhibited and is collected internationally. She is most recently published in "T", the New York Times Style Magazine, Mar. 2019. In Valerie Wilcox’s current body of work, “Constructs," she presents a reimagined, abstracted understanding of our constructed environment and how our brain works to piece together diverse elements. She uses common materials to create connections between our everyday lives and new ideas about how we construct our physical surroundings. Wilcox incorporates the ideals of Wabi Sabi into her working process. This aesthetic is centered on the acceptance and beauty of transience and imperfection. It refers to quirks and anomalies arising from the process of construction, which add uniqueness and elegance to both natural and man-made objects. Wilcox's Constructs at once become referential, self-reflexive and whimsical, managing to transcend their base materiality, as her source materials are elevated and imbued with newness of form and function.
Steven Wolkoff is an artist based in Los Angeles. He graduated from Dartmouth College with an honors English major, but somehow became a painter. His three-dimensional language paintings explore the boundaries of the medium of paint and forge a link between formalist and conceptual art. His work has been featured in Artillery Magazine, Poets/Artists magazine, and Architectural Digest.
Alison Woods started her career as a graphic designer, working in New York and later in California, designing video game packaging for Atari. She returned to graduate school late in life, and received her MFA with honors from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2012 where she was the faculty nominee for the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in Painting. Her work draws heavily from her experiences working in the technology sector of the Silicon Valley. She has exhibited internationally and is the founder of the Bridge Residency, an invitational project for artists wishing to explore the Los Angeles art scene.
Founded in 2009, Durden and Ray is comprised of 24 artist/curators who work together to create exhibition opportunities at their downtown Los Angeles gallery as well as in concert with artist groups and gallery spaces around the world. Durden and Ray concentrates on small, tightly curated group shows at the gallery, organized by the members, and hosts international artists as part of a commitment to global exchange and alternative networks. The Durden and Ray model expressly overlaps multiple strategies, including the commercial potential and visual identity of a gallery, the democratic structure of an artist group, the potential to create collaborative works of art in the manner of a collective, and the shared fiscal support of its programs by group members and project partners similar to a nonprofit organization. Durden and Ray is committed both to individual praxis and to shared aims of curatorial experimentation, visual research, and artistic exchange with international partners.
West by East Coast, a group exhibition with artists from Stockholm and Los Angeles.
August 30 - September 21, 2019
Opening Friday August 30 at 17.00-21.00 at Hangmenprojects