BLACK MIRROR
June 23 – July 21, 2007
HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS presents BLACK MIRROR - a group exhibition of painting, photography and sculpture by Hilary Baker, David Brady, Anja Conrad, Gregory Michael Hernandez, Branden Koch, and Greg Santos. Ominously titled, this summer group show includes six artists - from California, New York, and Germany - who reclaim form and content via the practice of looking at the world “thru a glass darkly” in favor of supernatural charisma. Alluding to the black mirror’s historical use as a effective tool for generations of both artists and psychics, the selected works in this exhibition turn outward and offer something of a reverse over the shoulder reflection of meaning, stepping beyond the patterns of the surfaces and images of our everyday. The exhibition explores dueling notions such as intimacy versus utility, natural versus unnatural, and focuses on synthesizing abstracted subject matter from our deconstructed landscapes. Demonstrating the diverse ways a work of art can reflect and illuminate the arrangements of nature and technology, the artists assembled in BLACK MIRROR evoke - through lucid communication - a manifold of perceptual experiences. While some artists use more analogous and/or contemporary versions of the black mirror in their artmaking practices (a camera, the television, the ocean) other artists gaze even deeper and make works that reveal secrets, lift fogs.
About the artists:
Hilary Baker has exhibited her paintings widely throughout the US and internationally since 1989. Solo exhibitions include HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, POST, Los Angeles, R.B. Stevenson gallery, San Diego and The Institut Franco-Americain in France. Educated at Otis (MFA), Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in Rome, and UCLA (BA), Baker has received Fellowships from Yaddo (2000) and the MacDowell Colony (1996) and has also been awarded Artist Residencies at the Pont-Aven School of Art in France (2001), ART/OMI (1998) and the Ucross Foundation (1989).
David Brady is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily as a sculptor. Born in 1978, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Brady has had solo exhibitions at RULE Gallery and Gallery Sink, in Denver, as well as The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, and was HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS’ inaugural artist with his solo exhibition “Max Jewel,” in February 2006.
Anja Conrad was born in 1971 in Frankfurt, Germany and grew up in Chicago and New York. Her photography has been exhibited in Austria, Chicago, Frankfurt, London, Munich, and New York. Anja studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her BFA in 1994, and at the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she received her MFA in 1998. In 2001 she returned to Frankfurt, where she currently lives. In 2002, the German art book publisher, Edition Braus, released “Sensation of the Ordinary,” a 117-page book of Anja’s color photographs from the years 1995 – 2001.
Gregory Michael Hernandez is a Los Angeles-based artist working primarily in painting, photography, and sculpture. Raised as a child in the desert, his landscape-based explorations in art stem from an interest in borders, walls, fences, spatial perception, and human relationships to place. His recent body of work, “The Captive Universe” project, is a photographic invention which involves taking 26 pictures of the entire realm of vision from one point in space, cutting the photos into shapes, and assembling them into a mathematically perfect three dimensional form. Hernandez recently exhibited works from “The Captive Universe” in the group exhibition, Beyond Image: Photography in Contemporary Art, curated by Elise Barclay at the Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena. His projects are accessible through www.exilechild.com.
Branden Koch is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has had solo exhibitions at Rowland Contemporary, in Chicago, and at HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS with his exhibition, “Discorporate,” in September 2006. Branden received an MFA from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a BFA in painting from The Cleveland Institute of Art. He has also studied abroad and exhibited in Scotland. Currently Koch conducts “One Night Stand” group exhibitions in his Williamsburg apartment and throughout New York City.
Greg Santos is a painter originally from New York. Greg received his MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York City and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Santos recently had a solo exhibition at See Line Gallery, Santa Monica, and has also exhibited his work at Lawrence Asher Gallery, Los Angeles, Pharmaka, Los Angeles, CUCHIFRITOS, NY, Black Dragon Society, Los Angeles, and in The Boat Show, at HIGH ENERGY CONSTRUCTS.
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Hilary Baker, Rig, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 40 x 36 inches
David Brady, Triple Point, 2007, porcelain, foam, 19 x 4 x 9 inches
Anja Conrad, Lip, 2007, c-print (plexi-mounted), 40 x 40 inches
Greg Santos, One Way To See Things, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 48 inches
Gregory Michael Hernandez, installation view
Branden Koch, installation view