Praz-Delavallade is pleased to present Storm Before the Calm, a multimedia group exhibition opening in Los Angeles on September 17 and running through October 29, 2022.

'One's mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion,' wrote Robert Smithson in his seminal 1968 essay _A Sedimentation of the Mind. '_The actual disruption of the earth's crust is at times very compelling, and seems to confirm Heraclitus's Fragment 124, 'The most beautiful world is like a heap of rubble tossed down in confusion.'' As these disruptions, far beyond any of those de-differtiations anticipated (or executed) by early land art pioneers, have increased over the decades, the confused beauty of the natural world has taken the form of what the British artist Marc Quinn has called the 'toxic sublime.' As global temperatures increase, so does the disorder of the planet's unleashed kinetic energy. We're in a high entropy moment that is unleashing a new physical, but also metaphysical, landscape onto the planet. Artists, from the Hague School to the Florida Highwaymen to the ecological art movement that took form alongside Smithson and his contemporaries, have always responded to the earth's weather patterns, seasons, and thermodynamic changes in real time. But how do artists concerned with landscape respond to a planet in a state of high entropy that cannot be reversed, one trapped in a political climate where, to quote Yeats, 'Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.' But when the centre cannot hold we're often left with what Mike Kelley might have called 'a less elevated beauty.' And this is the concern at the centre of Storm Before the Calm, a multimedia group show at Praz-Delavallade Los Angeles focused on work that embraces—without any didactical prescriptions— this entropic (geo-political) climate that is constantly reshaping itself, and somehow creeping toward equilibrium. It's a journey into the sublime of the time, a time when tomorrow will likely be more chaotic than today.

ABOUT THE CURATOR
Michael Slenske is a Los Angeles-based writer, editor and curator. He is a contributing writer for Los Angeles magazine, a contributing editor for Galerie, and has served as the editor- at-large of CULTURED and LALA and as a contributing editor at the Los Angeles Times's DesignLA, Modern Painters and Art + Auction. Slenske runs and curates the artist-led pop-up The Street & The Shop (@thestreetandtheshopla), which has been staged at Tin Flats, Frieze LA, and NeueHouse Bradbury. Slenske has also curated exhibitions at Wilding Cran Gallery, The Landing Gallery, domicile (n.), Praz-Delavallade Projects and Spring/Break Art Show.

ABOUT THE GALLERY
Praz-Delavallade has a longstanding relationship with both American and European artists whose practices span a variety of mediums. The gallery was founded 1995 in Paris with an inaugural exhibition that included work by Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Richard Petitbon, Jim Shaw, and Benjamin Weisman. In 1997, Praz-Delavallade was part of a burgeoning art scene in the 13th arrondissement on the eastern side of Paris, along with Air de Paris, Almine Rech, Art: Concept, Jennifer Flay, and Emmanuel Perrotin. Due to its strong connections with artists in Los Angeles, the gallery was known for bringing an international program to the growing Paris art scene, by featuring artists such as Sam Durant, Jim Isermann, John Miller, Analia Saban, and Marnie Weber, among others. In 2010, the Paris gallery moved to its current location at 5 rue des Haudriettes in the Marais and has continued its support of Los Angeles based artists by exhibiting a new generation that includes Matthew Brandt, Heather Cook, Nathan Mabry, Joe Reihsen, Ry Rocklen, Amanda Ross-Ho, and Brian Wills alongside European artists such as Soufiane Ababri, Philippe Decrauzat, Pierre Ardouvin, Thomas Fougeirol, and Fabien Mérelle. In the fall of 2016, Praz-Delavallade opened a new outpost at 6150 Wilshire Boulevard–on the renowned thoroughfare in Miracle Mile right across from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art–in an effort to create a bridge between the two cities it calls home.

Press release courtesy Praz-Delavallade.