Sunday, October 14, 2012

unweaves

This series of feather-weight sculptures are made from disassembled basket parts. The sculptures and their shadows are used as stencils to create compositions on linen. Oil paint is aggressively and directly applied with color allusions to night, mirrors and time elapsing. Flatness and space are pulling at each other.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

LA Times Review and James Kalm Report

Review: Alluring 'Little Conversations' with Joshua Aster at Sam Lee

Joshua Aster, "Spin Cycle," 2012, oil on linen, 19 x 18 inches.
(Sam Lee Gallery, Los Angeles)

By Holly Myers

September 25, 2012, 3:12 p.m.

Viewed as an ever-expanding aggregate, Joshua Aster’s paintings have the feel of so many pictorial petri dishes, in which constituent elements of painting’s DNA — color, tone, shape, pattern, texture — are assembled in varying combinations and ratios and left to reproduce of their own accord. The result is a nuanced, playful abstraction that grows ever more complex as its genes continue to splinter and stew.
In “Little Conversations,” Aster’s first exhibition with Sam Lee Gallery, he seems to have taken a step or two back. He’s shifted from acrylic and watercolor to oils, reduced his canvases to a modest, domestic scale not exceeding 24 inches, and introduced a range of new shapes, made by tracing the outlines of common objects found around the studio. Where many of the earlier works appeared layered and translucent, these are flat and opaque, heavier of step.
A similar air of curiosity prevails, however. They’re simpler paintings, but paintings that shimmer with the promise of a new acquaintance — appealing “little conversations,” in other words, that leave one eager to see where Aster goes from here.
Sam Lee Gallery, 990 N. Hill St., #190, Los Angeles, (323) 788-3535, through Oct. 6. Closed Sunday through Tuesday. www.samleegallery.com

Honored to be on the James Kalm Report

Sunday, September 23, 2012

sighting

imminentreturn 17" x 16" oil on linen

overunder 16" x 12" oil on linen

patchoverlap 24" x 17" oil on linen

sighting 15" x 18" oil on linen

Saturday, August 25, 2012

little conversations at Sam Lee Gallery

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Joshua Aster

little conversations

...

September 5 – October 6, 2012

Reception for the Artists: Saturday, September 15, 6 – 8 pm

Los Angeles—Sam Lee Gallery is pleased to present little conversations, a solo exhibition of abstract paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Joshua Aster. The artist’s recent oil paintings function as a type of sieve in which color, line, and patterns are distilled to their essence on the canvas. Nine works, measuring no more than 24x24 inches each, are intimate in scale and elemental in their emphasis on straightforward mark making. Aster employs ordinary objects such as wood off-cuts, erector set parts, broken plates, and picture frames found in his studio and intuitively arranges them on the canvas. He then traces their outlines and finishes the work by coloring in between the lines with oil paint, thus creating a familiar yet fresh pattern that resembles a brightly colored jigsaw puzzle: a confident display of color, line, and shape.

Born 1976 in New York, Joshua Aster received a master of fine art degree from University of California Los Angeles (2007) and a bachelor of fine art degree from Skidmore College in New York (1998). He has been featured in exhibitions throughout the United States: solo shows at Carl Berg Gallery in Los Angeles, Karl Hutter Fine Art in Beverly Hills, and Utah Museum of Contemporary Art in Salt Lake City (Utah). His work has also been included in various group exhibitions at Roberts & Tilton, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Michael Kohn Gallery, PØST Gallery, Annie Wharton Fine Art, Taylor de Cordoba, and Pepin Moore in Los Angeles, Angstrom Gallery in Dallas, and Plane Space in New York. Aster is a founding member of the artist collective OJO, which has had solo projects at MOCA, Los Angeles and LA>

Digital images are available for press purposes. Please email sam@samleegallery.com for reproduction requests.

Sam Lee Gallery

990 North Hill Street #190

Los Angeles, CA 90012

Mobile 323-788-3535

sam@samleegallery.com

www.samleegallery.com

Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Saturday, 12 to 6 pm and by appointment

Saturday, July 21, 2012

dataprocessing

dataprocessing 23" x 23" oil on linen

The HOLODECK, PØST, Thursday, July 26th, 7-9PM

organized by Brad Eberhard

The Holodeck is a simulated reality facility on the USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, the primary setting of the American science-fiction television series Star Trek the Next Generation. The characters on the show use the Holodeck for a variety of applications, including recreation, training, and problem solving. Although crew members can program in the environment or scenario they wish to inhabit, they cannot necessarily control their experience once inside. Things go wrong with it pretty regularly. People get stuck inside and can’t get out. Like art, the Holodeck is an ideal world in which refreshment and conflict go hand in hand.

The HOLODECK is a group show whose participants were each given a card from a deck of Star Trek the Next Generation playing cards as a prompt for an artwork. Each person was presented with the option to select a card with a specific character/theme or to receive a card randomly from the deck. The breakdown was about 50/50, specific vs. random. They could use the their card as a source, an object, or the starting point for any manner of conceptual strategy that suited them. The show will include a variety of 2, 3, and 4 dimensional media.