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16/3/2007

Two exhibitions

Lawrence Asher Gallery, Los Angeles

Morgan Craig and Andres Montoya

Lawrence Asher Gallery presents new works by Morgan Craig as he continues his detailed exploration into unique architectural landscapes. Morgan’s journey on canvas and linen skillfully displays the hyper-real imagery of place devoid of human form while raging in spirit. The work screams to humanity through large open spaces and wide pools of light and then whispers through mazes of exquisite detail. It is through these jungles of steel and stone that the poetry of the human condition rings: haunting and reminding.

Andres Montoya’s first solo exhibition at Lawrence Asher combines both figurative and abstract subject matter along with time-honored techniques with a fresh, unique palette. It is through diligence and attention paid to his process that these creations demonstrate reverence for the past and promise for the future. This series does not represent the completion of a new body of work as much as the introduction of an important new painter.

The Artists

Morgan Craig has assumed the arduous task of familiarizing students at Roberto Clemente Middle School, a Title 1 school, in North Philadelphia to the subject of art. He received his BFA with teacher’s certification from Tyler School of Art and his MFA from University of the Arts. Craig has exhibited throughout the U.S.A. and Canada, including OK Harris in New York City, the LIPA Gallery in Chicago, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts and Murray State University in the bluegrass state of Kentucky. Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York and Lawrence Asher Gallery in Los Angeles currently represent him.

At the beginning of 2006, Craig received the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Grant. Over the summer, he was a resident at the Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. Winter of 2006/2007 has brought with it Scope Miami as well as solo exhibitions at both the University of Wisconsin and Lawrence Asher Gallery. Morgan finds repose in Philadelphia.

Craig’s intent is to continue to convey his concept of lost and found time through semiotics: his paintings being the sign or symbol. The French author Marcel Proust once said that "painters” were the most capable when it came to "representing reality;” the fiction we claim to have lived. May this trajectory of whimsy live on.

Andres Montoya was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. He studied Graphic Design and painting at Los Angeles City College; and since the early nineties he has dedicated himself to finding a voice in his painting. Andres Montoya moves inward into an emotional realm. His paintings form a pattern of color composed of portraits and figures in quiet moments. The vibrancy of his paintings are not so much due to his rich color palettes: powdered reds and oranges, grounded purples and browns, but to his brushstrokes which elicit investigations of his subjects, their skin, their clothing, and the air that surrounds them. His brushstrokes are quiet examinations of these elements seeking truth in a flesh tone or a fabric weave. Consequently, this introspection leads to unapologetic yet humble emotion. His brushwork is controlled and searching.

"The act of creation is a daily necessity for me, it has become a language, an elixir that nurtures and motivates me to paint. In this recent body of work, I have delved into the deep crevasses of my experience. Memories, dreams, emotions such as love, melancholy, loneliness are prevalent throughout, and embodied in the figurative as well as the landscape. My goal in this series of paintings is to create a psychological and esthetical bridge where all of us can look and hopefully connect.”

Lawrence Asher Gallery
5820 Wilshire Blvd - Los Angeles

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