ART BASEL HONG KONG

**Participating artists: **Caleb Hahne Quintana, Sarah Lee, Jenny Morgan, Jordan Nassar, Soumya Netrabile, Meeson Pae, Neil Raitt, Gideon Rubin, Sigrid Sandström, Sarah Ann Weber, Ming Ying, Alejandro Cardenas, Anna Freeman Bentley

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Anat Ebgi is pleased to present a Kabinett of new works by Los Angeles based, American artist Alec Egan. This presentation continues Egan’s ongoing depictions of interiors and landscapes, and arouses a bittersweet and deeply personal poignancy following the total loss of his home and studio full of artworks to the winter wildfire disaster in Los Angeles. For nearly a decade Egan has tackled the psychology of the domestic interior space and expansive nature through his quietly cockeyed scenes leading viewers to the razors edge of idylls. A custom, floral patterned wallpaper, lifted from his paintings, will create an illusionistic continuum of the canvases onto the booth walls.

Egan’s paintings describe an ordinary world, calling forth vistas and dwellings both intimately known to the artist and those conjured from his imagination. Stuccoed apartment buildings, heaven-crowning palms, and calm seascapes of coastal Los Angeles, his works evoke something familiar, yet dreamily private and personal, veiling his visions in pattern and colour. His vivid and at times thickly impastoed application of paint and wallpapers chosen for their peculiar buds, blooming bouquets, or fruit-patterned fabrics intricately come together as mediations on the domestic, natural beauty, and fragility of life.

Vibrant sunsets, crashing waves, or clean bright bedrooms are subtly askew and hauntingly deserted; human narrative is inserted through architectural elements such as windows or parking lots and personal objects such as furniture and decor. Despite the banal status of his subjects—from waxy oranges resting on a windowsill to a sock on the floor, Egan’s humdrum daily settings are a colourful feast of dense pattern and thick impasto, whose mysteries yield through prolonged looking.

Egan’s approach to beauty is expressed through conflicting and layered wallpapers, fabrics, flowers, and foodstuffs; the clash is surreal and psychological. Floral wallpaper has a long tradition within the decorative arts, having survived many cycles of popularity. For this reason, a wallpapered room can be complicated to identify with a specific time period and within Egan’s paintings wilfully play on tropes of nostalgia and memory. Wallpaper also allows one to put a skin over something; it unifies a space, enclosing and enveloping it, which he uses to maximum effect. Vibrant blooming motifs coat his world with individuality and playfulness, signifiers of taste and cultural values of the (never seen) occupant-decorators of these habitations.

Alec Egan (b. 1984, Los Angeles, CA) completed his MFA at Otis College of Art and Design in 2013, and received a BFA in creative writing and poetry from Kenyon College. Recent solo exhibitions include Drawing Room at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, Brattleboro, VT; _Blue Setting, _Charles Moffett, New York, NY; Look Out, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; and Miro’s Corner, MAKI Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. His work has also been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions at Almine Rech, Paris, France; Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA; California Heritage Museum, Santa Monica, CA; Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA; Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles / New York; Charles Moffett Gallery, New York, NY; MAKI Gallery, Tokyo, Japan. His work was acquired by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami. Egan lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.