La Jennifer. New works. The color palette and physical form of her paintings embody a legacy of materials and movements that assume multiple readings through the lens of American iconography and entertainment.
Overduin and Kite is pleased to present “La Jennifer,” an exhibition of new
paintings by Los Angeles-based artist Dianna Molzan.
Molzan’s new body of work draws from disparate cultural histories and personal
influences focusing on a particularly American cultural heritage. With these
new paintings, Molzan references touchstones in her formation as an artist. The
color palette and physical form of the paintings embody a legacy of materials
and movements that assume multiple readings through the lens of American
iconography and entertainment.
Molzan’s work explores the range of possibilities within painting’s inherent
limitations addressing the fundamental structures of the medium. In some
works, Molzan unravels and reassembles canvas to mimic quotidian objects such
as string, cans, and tassels. These objects function as structural and
symbolic elements – the muted gray canvas cans are tied to the stretcher like
cans trailing from the fender of a wedding car and reference iconic moments in
American art such as the Campbell’s soup cans, Jasper Johns’ Ballantine Beer
cans, or could be read as a visual pun on the Ashcan School. In another
painting, canvas ruched over a stretcher frame evokes the pushed up sleeve of a
black leather jacket (à la Marlon Brando), the iconic and clichéd uniform
shared by various transgressive and mythologized American subcultures. A group
of Barnett Newmanesque “zip” stick panels are adorned with jutting eyes and
lips conjuring images of Ziegfeld Follies chorus lines, cigarettes, piano keys,
and totem poles – a Cole Porter song as painted wall score.
Molzan’s practice engages both a range of possibilities in the physical
rearrangement of the canvas and a more painterly interest in the revisiting of
popular historical styles and motifs. A group of large double panel works
engage various modes of painting popular in the decades of the artist’s
childhood, taken from Monet blockbuster shows to 1980s geometric abstraction by
way of Japanese import, to a piece resembling two abstracted De Kooningesque
eyes that are, in fact, a take on the flat-footed flaneur view in Edward
Hopper’s works like “Nighthawks” and “New York Movie.” The two vertical panels
of the latter painting create a binocular vision as they pair flush together to
form a larger horizontal picture. All of the double panel works treats the
internal edge as a compositional necessity. In one, a painted form crosses the
inside border so slightly that it seems to have overstepped its physical bounds
- in another work, a fanning right angle is placed so that the apex rests at
the seam like an arrow pointing to the break, upsetting the illusion of the
overall painting as a window and bringing the experience back to object
awareness.
The exhibition title refers to the once ubiquitous name Jennifer, and the
American practice of hybridizing names like LaShonda, LaRonda, etc. - a
cultural phenomenon that takes a partially borrowed import and transforms it
into a distinctive export. The name Jennifer no longer figures in the top 100
where it once ruled for over a decade, marking a significant generational
shift. Its potent memory as a once dominant cultural marker now out of fashion
is one of the many American trends that shaped the artist’s awareness of
cultural identity as a young person. Molzan’s use of diverse references
comments on the cyclical nature of trends, good and bad taste, and vernacular
language that allows past emblems of a zeitgeist to remain part of living
history.
Dianna Molzan lives and works in Los Angeles. Solo exhibitions have organized
by the ICA in Boston and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
Molzan’s work was included in “Painter Painter” at the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis and "All of this and nothing" at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
For further information, please contact Lisa Overduin or Kristina Kite at (323)464-3600.
Opening reception: Sunday, November 10th, 6-8pm
Overduin and Kite
6693 Sunset Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90028
Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm and by appointment