Merry Karnowsky Gallery
170 S La Brea Ave
323.933.4408
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Edward Walton Wilcox at Merry Karnowsky
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May 15, 2010 – June 12, 2010
Tuesdays–Saturdays (noon–6pm)
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“LA painter Edward Walton Wilcox is not afraid of paradox; and his darkly romantic, evasively poignant pictures benefit from this fearlessness. His art seems to represent either the prescient post-Utopianism of visual styles of the Middle Ages, or the enduringly seductive, pagan fantasy at the heart of modern life — or, more likely, both at once. LA Weekly art and music writer David Cotner engages Wilcox in conversation on Wednesday, June 2 (7pm) in pursuit of these and other mysteries.”
Shana Nys Dambrot, Flavorpill
Merry Karnowsky Gallery says:
How do we transform the horrifying realities of this world into something beautiful? What are our psychological mechanisms for coping with subjects too painful for rational thought? These are the issues addressed in Edward Walton Wilcox's second solo exhibition at Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles.
With his Gothic sensibility and taste for the Romantic period, Wilcox imagines the distances and expanses we all must navigate in our own subconscious landscapes. He explores our warlike inclinations in an installation piece titled "A Little Paranoia Goes a Long Way," featuring two large glass cabinets containing ten Belgian assault rifles preciously displayed as if they were artifacts of reverence, objects of aggressive meditation, or apocalyptic contemplation.
Fanatic includes paintings and sculptures that modulate between the stark realities of our age and the dreamlike musings of a mind in denial. Hauntingly beautiful, the work is overt in its reference to Gothic convention, in both content and physical facture. Wilcox's use of primitive materials such as wood, glass, rabbit skin glues, Italian pitch and gesso lend an old world authenticity to the crockets, tracery and other conventions of Gothic carpentry that caricaturize Wilcox's multi-disciplined work.
Art critic David Cotner states, "Wilcox's work is a brilliant and romantic star hurtling through the same galaxy as fellow travelers Odd Nerdrum and Hieronymus Bosch, so if you like your aesthetic dread spiked with the imploding placid inevitable, then this is the art for you."
