Praz-Delavallade Los Angeles is pleased to present American artist Dan Levenson with Recent Work, his third solo exhibition with the gallery that will open, in Los Angeles, on 16 September and will run through 14 October 2023.
Dan Levenson's Recent Work includes a series of hypnotic paintings based on concentric circles, large-scale paintings in shades of black, as well as works on paper. All works are done in oil, artificially aged through a variety of processes, and signed with a unique name that Levenson imagines belonged to a student of the State Art Academy, Zürich (SKZ for short), a bygone, modernist school of the artist's own invention. Also on display is a single sculptural object: a weathered, primer-splattered storage box, a classroom relic rescued from the ruins of the fictional school. The box contains a number of small paintings, some of which have been left intentionally unfinished.
On the surface, Levenson's geometric exercises recall various schools—Bauhaus, Black Mountain College, and Russian Constructivism—and exhibit those formal concerns so championed by modernism. However, through the narrative of the SKZ, his simulation of time's ravages upon materials, and the inclusion not only of artworks but studio paraphernalia, Levenson slyly embraces the very sense of theatricality that modernism largely and famously eschewed. Set apart from 'zombie formalism,' Levenson's work is undead yet aware, inviting us to grapple with the contested history of the 20th century as it entertains questions—philosophical, ideological and pedagogical—about the nature and purpose of individual expression. Ultimately, these works create a sort of alienated modernism, at once evoking failures of past artistic movements and a longing for a lost utopian spirit.
Press release courtesy Praz-Delavallade.
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