David Mach
dal 19/4/2007 al 1/6/2007
Segnalato da
19/4/2007
David Mach
Forum Gallery, Los Angeles
New Works. The exhibition includes seven large-scale collages, two overscale human figures made from coathangers and the trophy head of a Grizzly bear assembled completely from thousands of wooden safety matchsticks.
New Works
Forum Gallery presents the exhibition David Mach: New Work, from April 21 through June 2, 2007, with an opening reception Friday evening, April 20 from 7-9:00 pm. Forum Gallery’s first West Coast exhibition of this British artist includes seven large-scale collages, two overscale human figures made from coathangers and the trophy head of a Grizzly bear assembled completely from thousands of wooden safety matchsticks.
Beginning with his massive installation work of the 1980s, David Mach has fluidly interwoven the themes of consumerism and community. Until recently the artist incorporated hundreds of cutouts from magazines in his large-scale photo-collages, successfully leveraging the colorful qualities of these images to define scale, and to help generate a lively social commentary. In this new exhibition, Mach meticulously and ingeniously overlaps literally thousands of the identically same postcards at varying angles so as to yield large-scale collages. The resulting images in these 72 x 72 inch collages would normally not be associated with what is originally displayed on the card. Yet both source material and final product are inextricably linked by the artist through brilliantly derived cultural association and adroit use of titular language.
In Tour of Duty Mach has rendered a striking image of the American flag through countless superimpositions of a postcard of buxom blonde Pamela Anderson wearing her iconic red bathing suit from the hit TV series Bay Watch – a red which extraordinarily becomes the source color for the red in the flag’s stripes. Similarly, in Gold Rush thousands of the same postcard of a view down Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills are intertwined so as to create the image of a Buddha’s face, replete with fanciful decorations and intricate headdress. A postcard of Prince Harry of England is the source for Redheads, a reproduction of the famous 15th century masterpiece The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, as a postcard of Queen Elisabeth is that for the collage of Elvis Presley, titled Royal Connections.
Additionally included in the exhibition are two large-scale sculptures made from thousands of layered coathangers. Ghostly and spring-like, the coathangers represent a male and female moving in visual vibration, their identities masked in the aura created by their protruding hooks. Laboriously shaped, fitted and welded, the coathanger people represent another deft application of serial work, as is the trophy head of a Grizzly spawned from innumerous matchsticks affixed to one another. In fact, these are all ingenious uses of serial work on the part of an artist ardent to raise mindfulness of the interconnectedness of person and object in the highly advanced technological and consumerist world of today, insuperable in both its sensuality and banality.
David Mach was born in Methil, Fife, Scotland in 1956 and currently lives in England. He studied for five years at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, then spent three years working for his MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art, London. Since leaving the RCA in 1982 he has lived and worked in London. David Mach has made commissioned public sculptures in England, Scotland, and Australia. Mach is represented in many international collections including the Tate Britain, London; Gallery of Modern Art, Glasglow; National Portrait Gallery, London; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego; Kawasaki City Museum, Tokyo; Museum of Art, Auckland; Musée d’art Contemporain, Dole, France; and the Musée van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp.
Forum Gallery
8069 Beverly Blvd. (at Crescent Heights Blvd.) - Los Angeles
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Free admission